The Living Lab Model
How we learn, act and improve together as a community.
What is the Springfield Living Lab?
Living labs take a geographical scope to examine new solutions, with multidisciplinary teams and diverse partners, in order to advance the biggest priorities facing modern society. Springfield is this living lab.
As a city, it is small enough to be shaped by its people, adaptable and open to influence, where researchers genuinely engage with people and places to build capacity and have impact.
It brings together local people, schools, health services, organisations and researchers to better understand what supports health and wellbeing in everyday life.
We use this shared knowledge to design and test practical solutions in real-world settings, and to learn what works over time.
Rather than one-off programs, the Living Lab is a long-term approach. We listen, act, learn, and improve continuously, so that changes are meaningful and lasting.
How do we collect data?
Springfield Healthy Hearts brings together data from across health services, community systems and emerging sources to monitor trends in health and wellbeing. This includes hospital presentations, service use, and innovative approaches such as wastewater monitoring, which can provide early signals of population-level health risks.
These data sources allow us to understand patterns that are not always visible at the individual level, including how health needs are changing over time and where pressures are emerging across the system.
By taking a city-level view, we can identify opportunities for earlier intervention and ensure that responses are coordinated, rather than fragmented.
