This paper introduces Real Lived Experience (RLX) as a radical and necessary shift in how we perceive, design, and innovate in health and care.

RLX begins not with systems, stories or outcomes, but with how health, illness, and care are actually lived - in time, space, relation, and intensity. It invites a move beyond abstraction and representation toward a deeper sensing of experience as it unfolds: dynamically, affectively, and in context.

We argue that many of the persistent failures in health innovation - rising chronic illness, fragmentation, inequity - stem not from a lack of solutions, but from a failure of perception. RLX addresses this by reorienting attention to the real fields of experience where meaning, value, and transformation emerge.

This paper sets out the foundations of RLX, its distinct value, and how it is already being realised through Umio’s design work, Bergson.ai’s experiential intelligence, and Ooex’s platform for co-composition in motion.

Together, they form a new infrastructure for innovation - one that begins with life, not abstraction.

Contact us to learn more about RLX and how your enterprise can lead the next wave of health and care transformation centred on what truly matters.