InnovAALab – the Apulian Living Lab on “Healthy, Active & Assisted Living” – was born as a part of the Strategic Plan and Vision of the activities of the Public-Private Partnership “INNOVAAL” (according the PPPP model), funded in Apulia Region by the Ministry of Research in Italy in the field of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), Independent Living, Ageing Well, Healthy Living, etc. and related development of Products and Services. InnovAALab covers a large area at territorial level involving also the additional actors coming from the regional projects funded in the frame of “Health, Wellness and Socio-Cultural Dynamics” of the Apulian ICT Living Labs initiative.

InnovAALab is the catalyst for creating the conditions for “Apulia as Social Lab”, dealing with items that will be directly related to needs of citizens in the field of Health and Well-being, Social Inclusion, Assistance, Protection and Safety.

InnovAALab is based on the User-Driven Open Innovation methodology in order to amplify the impact on the territory toward the Social Innovation. With this methodology, the Living Lab increases the potential of high technology to create and/or attract high-tech entrepreneurship and, at the same time, uses high technology to contribute to the modernization of the socio-economic system. With this structure each pilot site could consist of real apartments, residential sites, hospitals, user organisations, etc. Each one of these includes users (elderly people, disable, frail persons, etc.) who are involved in the R&D projects since the beginning and participate to the development of the technological solution and services in a continuous sharing of opinion with the other actors (SME, research centers, etc.), according to the User Centred Design paradigm. In this way the developed solutions will be installed and validated in real context. At the moment the various pilot sites in the whole allow to involve 3.000 users.