The Innovation and Design Lab (IDL) is devoted to creating and publishing new knowledge in the health and wellness industries through a holistic approach to innovation and design research that generates products, tools, services, and solutions to improve health outcomes. 

The IDL is currently focused on a large collaborative program, "The Hospital of the Future: The Living Laboratory" at the Children's Center along with the Department of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes (JHMI) , our Corporate Research and Corporate Sponsor Partners.

IDL and JHMI research faculty and staff are dedicated to breakthrough thinking for the advancement of new knowledge, products, and processes in the health care and wellness industries. The Living Laboratory at JHMI is a research space with additional research space at IDL (UMBC) to foster visionary thinking and collaboration with our corporate partners. In this way, IDL will create new paradigms to ensure the future efforts in health care and wellness will improve the lives and health outcomes of patients. The Living Laboratory's research projects can be segmented into three categories:

visionary thinking towards the design and innovation of new technologies to be integrated to re-define the 'Hospital of the Future' 10-15 years from now;
design and innovation of new technologies, processes, or services that can be integrated into hospitals in 5 years ; and
advances in the innovation and design of current medical technologies (products or services).

The Innovation and Design Lab seeks to answer many questions through our research and collaborations with our corporate partners, a sample of which will include:

What will the hospital of the future look like?
How can the doctor-patient relationship improve?
How can the hospital setting or its design be improved to directly enhance patients' health outcomes and family experiences?
What are the best processes to use to build a hospital of the future?
Can the re-thinking of Design improve safety?
These questions create daunting and complex problems that will require the convergence of science, engineering, social science, computer science, medicine clinical and outcomes research, innovation, design and others to create and publish new knowledge.