A New Business for Care Centers: Care Industry Living Labs in the Longevity Economy

There was a period when smart technology was being introduced into elder care at a rapid pace. The typical example was a service that used wearable devices to monitor older people’s health at home, and similar efforts continue today. I also worked on an R&D project of this kind. The project collected health data through smartwatches. We distributed the devices to users free of charge and asked them to send data every day. That experience led me to conclude that, for data-driven care services, it is better to avoid wearable devices where possible. Older people did not like wearing them, and care workers said the devices got in the way when they were caring for older people. I now think that collecting health and physical-activity data through smartphones is the best approach. That experience taught me how important it is to test technology with the convenience of users in mind.

In home care, personal assistance, home nursing, home-based medical care, and adult day care, small inconveniences and changes in users’ lives emerge every day. We have generally seen these care settings simply as places where services are delivered. Could they also become laboratories where new technologies, products, and services begin—and a new line of business for care centers?

This article begins with that question.

A living lab is an approach that uses real-life settings as a venue for R&D and commercialization. Other industries are already using this approach. The European Union’s METABUILDING LABS (2021–2026) connected infrastructure across 13 countries so that construction SMEs could test innovative technologies in real buildings, testing facilities, and living labs.[1] In the energy sector, oPEN Lab (2021–2027) uses actual residential areas in Genk, Belgium; Pamplona, Spain; and Tartu, Estonia as living labs, with the aim of developing commercially viable solutions and spreading them to other cities.[2] In the Longevity Economy, care settings are attractive as living labs.

1. Care Centers Form the Longevity Economy’s Care Delivery Network

When we think about the industrial ecosystem of the Longevity Economy, technology companies, hospitals, universities, and research institutes are often the first actors that come to mind. Yet for new products and services to enter the market, they must pass through care settings where older people and people with disabilities actually live and receive care and medical services.

Home care takes place in the user’s home. Home nursing monitors health status, medication use, and chronic conditions in everyday living spaces. Home-based medical care extends medical treatment beyond the hospital, while adult day care centers repeatedly bring together care, rehabilitation, meals, mobility support, and cognitive activities in one place. I see these care settings as points where Longevity Economy technologies meet users.

Care robots, mobility-assistance devices, smart-home technologies, digital health services, and home medical devices do not become good products simply because they function as intended. Take a mobility-assistance robot. In a laboratory, we can verify whether it can safely lift and move a person. But real homes have narrow passages and thresholds, and users’ physical conditions change from day to day. The controls may also be too complicated for care workers.

Home care gives access to users’ everyday routines and living environments, while home nursing provides information about health and illness. Home-based medical care is where medicine and care meet, and adult day care allows multiple users to use products and services repeatedly. Alongside them are care workers, personal assistance workers, nurses, social workers, and physicians. The assets of a care center are real users and living environments, professionals who understand the care setting, and long-standing relationships with users.

Home → Home care & home nursing → Home-based medical care → Adult day care → Community

Connecting these care settings creates a distributed care industry living lab that is not confined to a single building. Alongside delivering completed services, a care center takes on the role of identifying needs in the care setting, testing products, and returning the results to the companies developing them.

2. Living Labs Have Evolved from Testing Sites into Industrial Infrastructure

Research and operating cases suggest that living labs have reached their current form through three broad stages.

Real-world technology testing → User co-innovation → Industrial innovation infrastructure

2.1. Real-World Technology Testing: Outside the Laboratory

The first attempts sought to confirm whether a technology developed in the laboratory would also work in real life. The European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) defines living labs as open innovation ecosystems that integrate research and innovation around users in real-life environments.[3] Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has institutionalized this function through its care-technology living lab network. Eight living labs across Japan provide companies with services including interviews with care workers, site visits, recruitment of testing sites, and support for ethics review (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare website, accessed October 2026).[4]

2.2. User Co-Innovation: Users Help Create the Product from the Beginning

The next attempts brought users into the living lab from the point at which their needs are defined, so that products are built with them. Leminen, Westerlund and Nyström (2012), drawing on interviews with participants in 26 living labs across four countries, described living labs as open innovation networks that extend corporate R&D into real-life environments and involve users, partners, and public-sector actors in co-creation.[5]

At the Smart Lifecare Co-Creation Workshop at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan, older people, people with disabilities, care workers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and facility operators participate from the idea stage. Prototypes are developed using measurements such as motion, electromyography, and plantar pressure, and testing then continues in care facilities in Kitakyushu.[6] At this stage, companies ask “What problems exist in the care setting?” before they ask “Where can we apply our technology?”

2.3. Industrial Innovation Infrastructure: Connecting Testing to the Market

More recent living labs stay involved after testing, until the product is commercialized. A product does not enter the market just because its effectiveness has been confirmed in the field. It still faces barriers such as certification and regulation, pricing, investment, public procurement, distribution, and maintenance.

Japan’s Care Tech Lab has worked with around 130 types of care robots and devices in facilities it operates, supporting everything from product concept planning and field testing to performance improvement, evaluation of staff burden and changes in users’ conditions, and marketing.[7] Future Care Lab in Japan recreates dining rooms, bathrooms, and private rooms like those in real care facilities. It evaluates not only product safety but also quality of care, staff workload, and cost-effectiveness, and supports launch preparation, sales strategy, and adoption.[8] The Health and Longevity Support Robot Center at the National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology runs more than 20 projects at the same time and uses three-dimensional motion analysis to measure how much care robots reduce strain on workers’ lower backs.[9] (The figures of around 130 products and more than 20 projects are based on the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare website as accessed in October 2026.)

This article focuses on this third stage: the living lab as industrial infrastructure that allows multiple actors to share users, living environments, professional expertise, and evaluation systems that individual companies would find difficult to secure on their own.

3. Testing Takes Different Forms in Different Countries

In Beijing, an older person plays gomoku with a robot. In the United States, a person with hearing loss holds a conversation through captioning glasses.

3.1. China: The State Leads Large-Scale Testing

In March 2026, at a senior-care service station in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (E-Town), an older person plays gomoku with a robot. Another robot takes meal orders and, based on a user’s health status, advises against foods high in sugar or fat. According to the Beijing municipal government, the facility covers about 1,100 square meters and has more than 40 types of robots deployed.[10]

Government policy lies behind this effort. Since 2025, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Ministry of Civil Affairs have been running a pilot program that deploys smart elder care service robots in homes, communities, and care institutions. Household products must be tested in at least 200 households with at least 200 units, while community- and institution-based products must be tested at no fewer than 20 sites with at least 20 units for six months or more. The program is designed so that products are improved during testing and the results feed into evaluations of safety, reliability, age-friendliness, and economic viability, as well as into standards development.[11] Functionally, it is a large-scale field-testing network built by the state.

3.2. United States: The Venture Ecosystem Links User Validation to Investment

With Xander Captioning Glasses, a conversation partner’s speech appears as real-time captions on the lenses. The company participated in AARP’s AgeTech Collaborative accelerator. Through the program, AARP connects startups with users to test products and links them to investors, mentors, and corporate networks. According to information released by AARP in 2026, participating startups had raised nearly US$1 billion, and their products and services had reached nearly 2.3 million people.[12] The AgeTech Collaborative links user validation directly to investment and the market.

3.3. Europe: Building Living Labs into Institutional Innovation Infrastructure

The European Union’s EVOLVE2CARE (2024–2026) tests health technologies such as post-discharge care and home monitoring in real-life environments while also addressing ethics, interoperability, regulatory barriers, and commercialization.[13] ENoLL also operates a certification system that assesses the maturity, sustainability, and impact of living labs.[14] Europe is moving toward institutionalizing the living lab itself as long-term innovation infrastructure.

China connects testing to scale and standards; the United States to investment and markets; Japan to adoption in care settings and product improvement; and Europe to regulation and diffusion.

4. Care Settings Need Certain Conditions to Become Industrial Living Labs

From the cases above, I have drawn five conditions for care settings to become industrial living labs. They summarize, from the perspective of the Longevity Economy, what living labs actually do in the process of industrialization.

4.1. Real-World Care Settings Must Be Secured on a Stable Basis

Products in the Longevity Economy become part of users’ daily lives, homes, family relationships, and care routines. Home care provides access to the home; home nursing to the everyday setting of health management; home-based medical care to the space where medicine and daily life meet; and adult day care to a setting where repeated group-based testing is possible. Taken together, these form a distributed testing network linking the home, community, care facilities, and medical care.

4.2. Users and Care Workers Must Become Co-Developers

Testing care technology does not end with asking older people whether they are satisfied. Care workers, personal assistance workers, nurses, social workers, and family members know best the conditions under which a product is actually used. Frontline workers are both co-developers and evaluators because they understand the conditions of use most closely.

4.3. Care Settings Must Generate Usable Data and Evidence

Simply trying a product does not create much industrial value. We need to measure systematically who used it and in what environment, how often it was used and what errors occurred, whether workers’ time or physical burden changed, and whether users wanted to keep using it. In my smartwatch project, the problems I encountered were older people’s reluctance to wear the device and the extra burden it placed on care workers. Problems like these become visible—and measurable—only when a product is actually used in the care setting.

“Doesn’t this ultimately turn users’ lives into experimental material for companies?”

That is a legitimate concern. Because health and everyday-life information are involved, user consent, privacy protection, data access rights, and the permitted scope of data use must be designed from the outset. But the objection misses something: new devices will enter older people’s homes whether or not a living lab exists. A living lab adds procedures for consent, measurement, and responsibility to that process. Those procedures protect users.

4.4. Companies Must Be Able to Improve Products Iteratively

If a company brings in a product, conducts a one-off satisfaction survey, and leaves, that is not an industrial living lab. There must be a cycle of identifying problems in the care setting, improving the product, and testing it again. Startups and SMEs find it difficult to recruit older people and multiple care providers on their own for repeated testing. If care centers can provide stable networks of users and institutions together with testing protocols, companies can in effect borrow external R&D infrastructure.

Problem identified in care setting → Product development → Testing → Data & feedback → Product modification → Retesting

4.5. Testing Must Lead to Market and Institutional Adoption

A positive evaluation in the care setting does not mean that commercialization has succeeded. In care and healthcare, institutional adoption must move alongside the market through certification and regulation, insurance and reimbursement, public procurement, and institutional purchasing. The performance of an industrial living lab should therefore be judged by whether products actually enter institutions and homes, connect to procurement, reimbursement, and investment, and generate customers and sales. Clear governance is also essential for long-term operation: who decides which companies are accepted, who bears responsibility for safety incidents, and how workers are compensated for additional duties all need to be defined.

5. The Care Center’s New Business Is Testing, Evaluation, and Industry Linkage

A care-center manager will naturally ask who pays for this work, what the center needs to have in place, and where it can begin in Korea. A care center does not need to manufacture robots or medical devices itself. What it sells is testing, evaluation, and connecting companies with care settings.

5.1. Companies and the Public Sector Are the Buyers

Companies are the first likely payers. They spend significant amounts recruiting users, finding testing sites, and gathering feedback from care workers. A care center can provide these functions as field-testing services, usability and outcome evaluation, and participation in joint R&D. For companies, this is a cheaper and faster route than doing everything alone.

Government and public institutions also pay. A care center may participate as a testing site in a national R&D project or operate a testbed for a local government. If a product is covered as a long-term care assistive product or enters public procurement, its price is paid through insurance or by public institutions. The care center’s role is to generate the testing data and evidence needed for the product to enter those systems. The 2026 Care Robot Network Forum hosted by Korea’s National Rehabilitation Center likewise pointed to data standardization, financing linked to the National Health Insurance and Long-Term Care Insurance systems, and workforce restructuring as necessary conditions for the wider diffusion of care robots.[15]

5.2. The Care Center Needs the Capacity to Run a Living Lab

First, there must be dedicated personnel who can design testing and connect companies with care settings. Simply adding testing duties to care workers’ existing workload is not sustainable. Procedures for user consent, ethics review, and privacy protection are also necessary. The center must also be able to record indicators consistently—such as usage frequency, continued-use rates, and workers’ time—that companies and purchasing institutions can trust. When relationships with companies, universities, and research institutes are added, a care center moves from renting out space to selling testing as a service.

5.3. Korea Already Has Testing Programs and Public Procurement

Korea already has national programs that support testing in care settings. The National Rehabilitation Center, a national rehabilitation institution under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, supports technology development, translational research, field testing, and institutional improvement in care facilities and homes through its “Translational Research Program for Care Robots.”[16] The Seongnam Senior Industry Innovation Center, which has supported the testing of age-friendly products through the Korea Senior Living Lab established in 2015, was selected for this program in 2023. It was given a four-and-a-half-year, KRW 2.3 billion (about US$1.7 million at the exchange rate of October 1, 2026) project connecting 21 care-robot developers with 14 care facilities for testing.[17] This is a Korean example of the care industry living lab described in this article. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources also solicited public-diffusion and private/regional-diffusion demonstration projects under its “2026 Service Robot Demonstration Program” announced in March 2026,[18] while the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Science and ICT announced an “AI Care Technology Full-Cycle Support Strategy” in April 2026, under which field-based living lab testing will be used to verify how well care technologies work.[19]

Korea’s Long-Term Care Insurance for Older Persons subsidizes the purchase or rental of assistive products used by older people who need care. For a new product to become eligible for coverage, the applicant must demonstrate either sales of at least 200 units or sales revenue of at least KRW 50 million (about US$37,000) during the previous year, and the product must go through document and product review, price negotiations, and deliberation by the reimbursement evaluation committee and the Long-Term Care Committee (based on the July 2026 application round).[20] Since January 2026, AI fall-protection airbags, digital medication reminders, and activity-monitoring systems have also been supported on a pilot basis in 12 regions.[21] For products like these to move from pilot programs into regular coverage, real-world usage data are needed—and care centers are where those data are generated.

Korea’s Public Procurement Service is the central purchasing agency for goods used by government and public institutions. When the agency designates a near-commercial product as an innovative prototype, public institutions can purchase it through negotiated contracts for three years. The agency also runs pilot-purchase programs in which it buys products with its own budget, has user institutions test them, and then evaluates the results.[22] Few places are better suited than care centers for this kind of pilot use. Care centers outside Korea can begin by identifying equivalent systems in their own countries: support programs for testing, insurance reimbursement, and public purchasing.

5.4. Questions to Ask Before Starting

Answering these questions shows where a center stands.

① Can our center reliably connect companies with users and living environments that companies would struggle to recruit on their own?

② For our staff, is testing an extra task simply added to their workload, or a professional role that is compensated?

③ Can we turn user experience into data that companies and purchasing institutions can trust?

④ Do we have partners who can connect testing results to reimbursement, procurement, and investment?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” that is where preparation should begin.

6. Care Industry Living Labs Are Operational Infrastructure for Longevity Economy Clusters

As discussed in the previous article, OECD research on clusters suggests that productivity and innovation rise when firms, industries, talent, and infrastructure come together in a particular place and when knowledge spillovers, inter-firm transactions, the movement of specialized workers, joint research, and entrepreneurship recur.[23][24] Care industry living labs are mechanisms that make these interactions happen around real-life problems.

When a mobility problem affecting older people is identified, a company develops mobility-assistance technology and users and care workers participate in development. The product is tested in homes and adult day care settings, and a university evaluates its effects. Once improved, the product can move into pilot programs, procurement, and reimbursement, while investors support the company’s expansion. As this cycle repeats, companies accumulate knowledge of the ageing market, care centers build testing capabilities, and universities develop evaluation methods and data. A cluster forms when firms, specialized talent, data, investment, and trading relationships remain and accumulate in the region as a result of testing.

Problem identified in care setting → Co-development → Testing → Market & institutional adoption → Company growth → Accumulation of firms, talent & capital

Conclusion: The Care Center’s New Product Is Knowledge from the Care Setting

Seeing the care center as an industrial living lab means organizing, as a business, the work of identifying needs in care settings where services are delivered every day, co-developing solutions with companies, testing them, building data, and using the results to support market entry and institutional adoption. The settings and the people are already there. What is needed now is the intermediary capacity to connect them.

In the smartwatch project, I saw that even a good technology changes nothing if users do not use it every day. Whether people will keep using a technology is decided in the care setting.

A care center’s living lab is a place to test whether a technology is useful in real life, and a space to build products together with companies.

[About the Author]

Kim Sung-ki, Ph.D. in Social Welfare

Director, The Care Biz Lab

Chair, SE Empower Social Cooperative

Email: skkwelfare@gmail.com

 

References

[1] European Commission, CORDIS (2021). “METABUILDING LABS: METAclustered, SME oriented European Open Innovation Test Bed for the BUILDING envelope materials industrial sector” (Grant Agreement 953193, Jan. 2021–July 2026). https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/953193

[2] European Commission, CORDIS (2021). “oPEN Lab: Open innovation living labs for Positive Energy Neighbourhoods” (Grant Agreement 101037080, Oct. 2021–Mar. 2027). https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101037080

[3] ENoLL (2026). “Living Labs” (updated Feb. 3, 2026). https://enoll.org/living-labs/

[4] Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. “リビングラボ・実証フィールドについて” [About Living Labs and Testing Fields] (accessed Oct. 5, 2026). https://www.mhlw.go.jp/kaigoseisansei/ns/lab/lab.html

[5] Leminen, S., Westerlund, M. & Nyström, A.-G. (2012). “Living Labs as Open-Innovation Networks.” Technology Innovation Management Review, 2(9), 6–11. https://doi.org/10.22215/timreview/602

[6] Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. “スマートライフケア共創工房（九州工業大学）” [Smart Lifecare Co-Creation Workshop (Kyushu Institute of Technology)] (accessed Oct. 5, 2026). https://www.mhlw.go.jp/kaigoseisansei/ns/lab/page/l0008.html

[7] Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. “Care Tech Lab（株式会社善光総合研究所）” (accessed Oct. 5, 2026). https://www.mhlw.go.jp/kaigoseisansei/ns/lab/page/l0003.html

[8] Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. “Future Care Lab in Japan（SOMPOケア株式会社）” [Future Care Lab in Japan (Sompo Care Inc.)] (accessed Oct. 5, 2026). https://www.mhlw.go.jp/kaigoseisansei/ns/lab/page/l0004.html

[9] Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. “健康長寿支援ロボットセンター（国立長寿医療研究センター）” [Health and Longevity Support Robot Center (National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology)] (accessed Oct. 5, 2026). https://www.mhlw.go.jp/kaigoseisansei/ns/lab/page/l0006.html

[10] Beijing Municipal Government (2026). “Beijing E-Town Launches World’s First Senior Care Station Equipped with Robots” (Mar. 17, 2026). https://english.beijing.gov.cn/beijinginfo/sci/latesttrends/202603/t20260317_4558443.html

[11] Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China & Ministry of Civil Affairs (2025). “关于开展智能养老服务机器人结对攻关与场景应用试点工作的通知” [Notice on Launching Pilot Work on Paired Research and Scenario Application of Smart Elder Care Service Robots]. https://www.miit.gov.cn/jgsj/zbys/wjfb/art/2025/art_577966ee40fb4d748ce7e5acecc0587f.html

[12] AARP (2026). “How AgeTech Collaborative Fuels New Ideas For Aging” (May 26, 2026). https://www.aarp.org/advocacy/agetech-collaborative-helps-older-adults/

[13] European Commission, CORDIS (2024). “EVOLVE2CARE: Engaging the Value Of Living Labs to Innovate Care And Regulatory Environments” (Grant Agreement 101158152, Oct. 2024–Sept. 2026). https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101158152

[14] ENoLL. “ENoLL Labelling and Certification” (accessed Oct. 5, 2026). https://enoll.org/enoll-labelling-and-certification/

[15] Jeonguk Illyeok Sinmun (2026). “From Hospitals to Homes: Three Conditions for Continuous Care-Robot Services Identified by the 2026 Forum” (in Korean; Sept. 22, 2026). https://www.kjob.news/news/524942

[16] National Rehabilitation Center. “Translational Research Program for Care Robots: Overview” (in Korean; accessed Oct. 5, 2026). https://nrc.go.kr/research/html/content.do?depth=rp&menu_cd=03_05_00_01

[17] Incheon Ilbo (2023). “Seongnam Senior Industry Innovation Center Selected for National Rehabilitation Center’s Translational Research Program for Care Robots” (in Korean; Aug. 24, 2023). https://www.incheonilbo.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1208386

[18] Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources (2026). “Call for Projects: 2026 Service Robot Demonstration Program” (in Korean; Mar. 27, 2026, Bizinfo). https://www.bizinfo.go.kr/sii/siia/selectSIIA200Detail.do?pblancId=PBLN_000000000120052

[19] Bravo My Life (2026). “Government to Develop Care-Specialized Robotics by 2032” (in Korean; Apr. 16, 2026). https://bravo.etoday.co.kr/view/atc_view/19056

[20] The Asia Business Daily (2026). “NHIS Accepts Applications for New Long-Term Care Assistive Products” (in Korean; July 9, 2026). https://view.asiae.co.kr/article/2026070911235612991

[21] NewsPim (2026). “Ministry of Health and Welfare Expands AI-Based Assistive Products: Preventing Falls and Missed Medication” (in Korean; Jan. 28, 2026). https://www.newspim.com/news/view/20260128000391

[22] Public Procurement Service. “Innovative Product Designation” (in Korean; accessed Oct. 5, 2026). https://pps.go.kr/kor/content.do?key=00648

[23] Tsvetkova, A. et al. (2020). “The spatial dimension of productivity: Connecting the dots across industries, firms and places.” OECD Regional Development Working Papers, No. 2020/01. https://doi.org/10.1787/ba5edb47-en

[24] Temouri, Y. (2012). “The Cluster Scoreboard: Measuring the Performance of Local Business Clusters in the Knowledge Economy.” OECD LEED Papers, No. 2012/13. https://doi.org/10.1787/5k94ghq8p5kd-en