Introduction to living labs

Hello! Everyone! Welcome back to this class! After we introduce the development of medical humanities in Taiwan and in the States. Now, we are going to put in the concepts into practice. The center scene of this class is to use service-learning for empowering tribal people with living labs for medical education reform in Taiwan. Living labs are experimentation environment aimed at shaping technology for real-life contexts; researchers have proposed this approach especially well suited to ICT innovation for rural area or the elderly. The ideal of empowerment is reflected in the trend to incorporate service learning aimed at humanistic goals into curriculum reform, especially in medical universities in Taiwan.

This action-based example is working to establish a platform for smart technology development in tribal areas using the Living Labs approach, with the goal of empowering high mountain indigenous peoples and ameliorating their marginal position in Taiwan. So… We think that this is a kind of community-based clinical practice. With this kind of approach, we may use the concept which is practice-based bioethics with idea of knowledge management. Along the line, we can bridge the social contexts with the medical context. We want to situate a professional reasoning in the fabrics of forever changing social contexts, especially with rise of genomic medicine and information technology. Along the line, we consider clinical ethics as a foundation definitely as a professional.

We need, also, to engage in research ethics. Then, both server as a important foundation pave a way for us to nurture our own professional ethics. And with a broader goal, that we together, with other professions and citizens, we are looking for, in the moved world, a sustainable ethics. So… We define the missions for today’s class. First, using a definition of living labs proposed by Ballon’s research group. We design our service-learning curriculum that lets students contribute to “an experimentation environment in which technology given shape in real-life contexts and in which (end) users are considered ‘co-producers’”.

And secondly, an interdisciplinary approach helps to map a Living Lab onto an experimental tribe, in developing “a systemic innovation approach in which all stakeholders in a product, in which all stakeholders in a product, service or application participate directly in the development process.” So… Such kind of approach is based upon the smart living industry technology promotion policy and strategy in Taiwan since the year of 2008.