Living Labs (LL) are a novel and potentially robust way of addressing real-life health challenges, especially within the dementia field. Generally, LLs focus on co-creating through implementing the quadruple helix partnership as a user-centric approach to co-creating. In the context of this paper, the users were people with dementia and their informal carers. LL are not necessarily environments that evaluate these co-created innovations within the real world. Considering this disconnect between co-creation and real-world evaluation, this paper, as a critical commentary, will reflect on the methodological lessons learnt during the development of an LL model aimed at addressing this discrepancy. The LL at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) was commissioned to co-create and then evaluate a new Dementia Reablement Service. The case study findings revealed that the Dementia Reablement Service had a positive impact on the quality of life of people with dementia, suggesting that the service is a catalyst for positive change. In addition, the critical learning from this case study highlights the potential role of LLs in seamlessly co-creating and then evaluating the co-created solution within the real world. A benefit of this way of working is that it provides opportunities for LLs to secure access to traditional research funding.

Background Children and young people (CYP) from underrepresented communities in the Liverpool and Sefton regions (UK) experienced an increase in mental health needs, pre-pandemic. The “CYP as One” online platform was introduced via a co-creation schedule, to support the uptake of service users into child and adolescent mental health services. However, post-pandemic, the risk of poor mental health for CYP further increased. The current study co-customised the “CYP as One” platform to facilitate the wider access and inclusion of CYP from underserved communities into relevant mental health services through ensuring their viewpoints are sufficiently represented in the referral process. Methods The co-customisation schedule utilised the Living lab approach. Service user feedback was extracted from the “CYP as One” platform and data was generated via seven online focus groups conducted over two months. The focus groups included 16-19-year-old young people; parents of under 16-year-old children and health service providers. Content analysis was conducted on service user feedback, which was covertly presented to focus group participants to aid the conversations during the focus groups. The final data analysis involved conducting a thematic analysis on service user feedback and focus group data. Findings The thematic analysis on service user feedback and focus group data returned seven themes. Contrasting preferences of referral methods; the importance of inclusive access to a wide range of platform users; the relevance of demonstrating empathy and sympathy via non-face-to-face referrals; perspective taking aids in the mutual understanding of the needs of stakeholders involved; digital content should account for age and social-development related differences in this context; CYP and parents require timely and relevant mental health information; digital means of referral methods may integrate fragmented services. Conclusions Involving insights from service users; the public and health service providers allowed the in-depth exploration of everyday challenges service users may face when using the “CYP as One” platform. The solutions identified by participants to such issues represent a reliable improvement to the platform. Ensuring that the digital content can replace in-person referral processes is of utmost importance to support CYP who previously experienced difficulties in engaging with mental health services.

Precious metal nanoparticles have important applications in catalysis. In order to maximize the atomic efficiency and therefore reduce the usage of valuable resources, the particle size, morphology and their interaction with the support need to be carefully controlled and optimized. In the case of monometallic Au and Pt catalysts prepared via wet chemical routes, advanced electron microscopy has allowed us to obtain an unprecedented and more complete view of the complex dispersion of metal entities present, including nanoparticles, sub-nm clusters, and atomically dispersed species. With this new information, a better understanding of the catalytically active sites/species can be established.[1] By correlating catalytic performance data with the nanostructures generated by various catalyst preparation methods the most active species can be identified and specifically targeted for synthesis, thus significantly improving the atomic efficiency.Making nanoalloys is another way of improving atomic efficiency for precious metal catalysts. In some cases, an earth abundant metal is combined with the precious metal, in an effort to maximize the exposure of the latter on the particle surface. Quite often, a synergistic effect can be observed, meaning that the nanoalloy performs better than either of its individual components working in isolation. Fabricating nanoalloy catalysts is however, considerably more difficult than it sounds because the dispersion of two metals needs to be controlled simultaneously. Using Pd-based bimetallic systems [2] as an example, we will demonstrate how advanced electron microscopy, which provides atomic level structural and chemical analysis, can help us to achieve such a goal. With the help of electron microscopy, metal-support interactions can be identified and in some cases manipulated to improve the performance complex bimetallic catalyst systems. [3] Finally, we will highlight our recent attempts to investigate the structure of nanoalloy colloids at early stages of their formation, in an effort to understand how different synthesis conditions (e.g. different reducing agents, different stabilizing ligands) can affect the size and composition distribution of the resultant particles. A combination of in-situ spectroscopies and electron microscopy has been used to monitor the nucleation and growth of such colloidal metal nanoparticles. We will share our findings on the quenching the embryonic colloidal solutions using plunge freezing techniques. We will also use high surface area support materials (e.g. carbon black) to immobilize the particles at later stages of the growth and study the composition distribution of the two metals. These will bring insights into the particle formation mechanisms and lead us to a better control of size, morphology and composition of the bimetallic nanoparticles [4].