Lafayette, LA : A Living Lab for Health Innovation
Lafayette, LA proudly announces its plan to become a Living Lab for Health Innovations as a US Ignite community. The US Ignite Partnership capitalizes on what is possible through virtualized ultra-fast broadband networks, and "ignites” the development of next-generation Internet applications and services for local and national communities. The Center for Business & Information Technologies (CBIT), the Center for Visual and Decision Informatics (CVDI) at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and FiberCorps are working with community leaders in Lafayette and the State of Louisiana to create a living lab for health innovation, and plan to further develop tools and applications for the US Ignite program.
The Lafayette, Louisiana Living Lab will serve as a community-scale testbed for healthcare innovators to define, design and develop solutions to many challenges facing healthcare today. The areas of focus include childhood obesity, aging in place, emergency medicine, workplace health through analytics of big healthcare data. These innovations will be the catalyst for advanced programs, new policies, or transformative technologies allowing established companies, startups, and entrepreneurs to fully engage an ecosystem of fiber-optic infrastructure, involved community partners, as well as, financial and technical resources.
Your Innovation + Our Community = Future of Healthcare
The idea was born as 296 scientists, physicians, students, and techies gathered in Lafayette earlier this year for the CajunCodeFest. The coding competition allowed teams access to previously unreleased data to create viable solutions in tackling childhood obesity. Through this event, six companies are now interested in using Lafayette as a Living Lab to continue their work in healthcare.
The Living Lab is interested in recruiting the best minds, entrepreneurs and companies from across the globe, while developing the next-generation technology innovations and knowledge-economy workforce for the health industry.