The Mayo Clinic and Delos, which specializes in “wellness real estate,” announced an agreement to design and construct a Well Living Lab, described as “a multidisciplinary lab uniquely focused on the interaction between health, wellness and the build environment.”
The lab will debut in April 2015, next to the Mayo Clinic’s Rochester campus. The lab will be committed to researching the relatively new but rapidly growing wellness market, while developing and testing innovations in structural design and how it relates to health and well-being of people in the environments they work within.
The Wellness Lab will simulate realistic living and working environments, including homes, offices, schools, hotels and communities, testing the efficacy of “wellness-based interventions.”
Delos and the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation will co-govern the lab, which will be staffed by Mayo Clinic personnel, along with members of the Delos team.
The lab, officials said, will comport with the WELL Building Standard, which Delos established in 2012 in collaboration with the International WELL Building Institute and third-party certified through the Green Building Certification Institute. The standard is governed by seven categories — air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort and mind.
Upon completion, the WELL Living Lab will focus on a range of activities including case studies and projects that include product and technology evaluations, testing, development and improvement, as well as sponsored research and protocol testing.
Founded in 2007, Delos is based in New York and has spent over five years developing and collaborating with medical institutions and researchers, architects, engineers and wellness leaders to create healthy designs for buildings and technologies that passively deliver medical interventions through the built environment.
