How Can You Get involved?
Almost all of us have a story to share about our own experience with elder care, whether we were caring for a loved one, working within healthcare or ourselves dealing with the challenges of getting older.
Industry Partners
BIF launched the Elder Experience Lab to create a platform where industry and public sector partners can gather deep insights into the experience of older adults and leverage those insights to design, test and develop new products, services, and business models in a real-world laboratory.
Partners that seek a deeper understanding of the elder experience can access the Lab and invest in deep dive research in areas of elder experience of high strategic value. Partners also can participate in Lab activity through design studios that directly engage the Lab’s elder participants in research and development work.
Beyond the benefits of accessing an ongoing and sustainable laboratory platform, BIF’s ability to facilitate collaboration between Lab partners enables a flow of information and insights that is critical to developing market-making opportunities that link capabilities across traditional industry and sector boundaries.
BIF is currently advancing a multi-partner collaboration specifically addressed to understand and improve the aging-in-place experience. Industry partners interested in joining the lab should contact Melissa Withers at (401) 270-7906 or melissa@businessinnovationfactory.com. Read about our new multi-partner collaboration.
Individuals
Please join the Business Innovation Factory’s Elder Experience Lab online forum. We would love to hear from you. If you have been following work in the Lab, you know just how critical the redesign of our elder care system is to the future of our country. The Lab’s on-line forum offers opportunities for the community to discuss lab activities, participate in specific activities and participate in guided discussions. We invite you to get involved and share your ideas.
To kick off the conversation we have posted outputs from the Lab's most recent work into the challenges of medication management. Visit the forum now to get involved.
Volunteers
We are always looking to recruit new volunteers into the Elder Experience Lab. Specifically, we seek to engage people who fall into one of several categories who are willing to candidly share information about their day-to-day experiences with the Business Innovation Factory Elder Experience Lab team.
Here are the types of individuals we typically recruiting for direct engagement in active lab research:
- Elders aging independently in their own homes
- Elders aging independently in the home of a family member
- Adults aged 60-75 who aspire to "age in place" for as long as their health allows
- Adults caring for elder loved ones who need a spectrum of assistance with activities of daily life
Work in the lab often entails sharing information about your personal experience in the form of interviews, narrative, photographs and videos. It is our policy to protect participant's sensitive personal information, although please remember that activity in the Elder Experience Lab is intended for a public audience. It is our aim to share what we learn with others. If you are an intensely private person, this activity may not be for you!
Please email to melissa@businessinnovationfactory.com for more information.
