7 Game-Changing Nurse-Led Innovations Shaping the Future of Healthcare

HLTH 2024 was full of celebrity activists such as John Legend and Halle Berry. There were doctors and researchers from around the world showcasing their innovative ideas that are changing the face of healthcare. Chelsea Clinton spoke on behalf of women and reproductive freedoms alongside Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell, host of the Beyond Clinical Walls podcast. We heard remarks from the First Lady, Jill Biden. 

There were companies from around the globe gathered together on one single stage, in unity, with one common goal in mind: change lives. It was very obvious from the energy inside the walls of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas that the people in the healthcare industry who are finding ways to innovate beyond the hospital walls truly care about forward progress and utilizing the technology at our fingertips to make a bewildering change.

Although there was so much to take note of from the HLTH 2024 conference, the shining light that harnessed so much unexpected attention was the Nurse Innovators Pavilion. The Nurse Innovators Pavilion showcased elite nurses who have taken their expertise from the bedside into innovating their products and ideas to increase efficiency, educate the masses, provide resources, and overall contribute with their own creative touch to making the lives of all healthcare workers and patients better. Read on as I highlight seven nurse innovators I had the pleasure of meeting at HLTH and who exemplify nursing innovation. 

Nurse Jenn Johnson, BScN, RN, founder of RX for Growth, has spent more than a decade and a half serving Northern and Southern Ontario as an ER Nurse. Jenn channeled her burnout and hopelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic to pour love into products to help other nurses who were/are struggling with similar battles. 

Nurses are told from day one that they will develop a “sixth sense” as they progress through their careers–this was not lost on Jenn. She leveraged the power of this sixth sense to write a book: Nursing Intuition: How to Trust Your Gut, Save Your Sanity, and Survive Your Career. Jenn captivates her audience through personal anecdotes, journaling, and personal reflection to help others. You can find all of Jenn’s products on Amazon and follow her journey on Instagram @ernurse.jenn. 

Kali Dayton, DNP, AGACNP ignited her passion for “Awake and Walking” ICUs. Have you ever seen an intubated patient walking? Neither had I until I saw the work that Kali had passionately pursued. Kali began working in an ICU where intubated patients walking was normal, only to find through travel nursing that this was not the case everywhere. Kali recognized the gap in knowledge and the poor outcomes of patients who were over sedated leading to prolonged sedentary hospitalizations, thus leading to deconditioning and poorer outcomes. 

Kali began Dayton ICU Consulting where she and her team strive for their mission to “ensure every ICU clinician understands the why and how of mastering the ABCDEF Bundle” (https://daytonicuconsulting.com/about/). With Dayton ICU Consulting, Kali is helping decrease ventilator time by 4.2 days, decreased 7-day mortality reduction by 68%, and lowering hospital readmissions by 46% all by using the ABCDEF Bundle. One ICU that implemented Kali’s methods saw a decrease in costs by $5 million in their first year!

Joey Ferry, BSN, RN, and Taofiki Gafar-Schaner, MSN, RN are on a mission to “foster change that will improve healthcare workflow and patient care. Joey and Taofiki met while working at the bedside together and from that, SafeSeizure was born. If you work at the bedside (especially in the ER) then you know all too well how high the risk is for patients having seizures in an acute setting. I am certain that most of you have wrapped a few blankets with some tape around the side rails of the bed to keep your patient safe. 

Through seeing an issue and putting their innovative minds together, Joey and Taofiki designed a product that is single-patient use which means the SafeSeizure pads will follow the patient through the hospitalization. These pads are easy to clean, quick, and easy to apply/remove, and are universal to mold to any modern bed model with longer bed rails. The SafeSeizure pads are a self-inflating device and easy to store, while also being eco-friendly (made with 100% recycled material)! 

Dr. Susan B. Davis, DNP (AKA The Rescue RN) is the founder of Rescue RN, known for her signature program, CodePRep. Dr. Davis uses her highly valued expertise to educate people on community CPR and AED training, as well as working in several healthcare settings with healthcare workers across the board to ensure quick and effective emergency responses. 

Dr. Davis noticed a major problem in the healthcare systems where there were inconsistent and subpar responses to cardiac arrest patients. CodePRep provides unit-specific practices along with “standardized and reproducible high-quality performance drills” to ensure better outcomes for cardiac arrest patients, despite who the first person responding may be. 

CodePRep utilizes standardized mock codes, team performance training, and debriefing, with the ultimate goal to be to saving more lives and creating confidence and preparedness in the first person responding to a cardiac arrest emergency. 

Stanford Alumni and Yale DNP Student, Samu Mhlambi, RN, developed NurseBrain Synapse which is “the first and only portable nurse workflow app helping nurses efficiently manage their workload and reduce burnout!”. NurseBrain is seeking to reduce nursing burnout by decreasing documentation burdens, providing excellent care through the reduction of medical errors from evidence-based communication frameworks, and collaborating securely with a HIPAA-compliant system. 

The goal that Samu is striving for through NurseBrain is simply to pull the nurses away from the computer and back to the bedside. To allow AI to automate charting and gather patient information and tasks together so that the nurse can feel efficient and confident in their decision-making. Nurses often feel the pressure of carrying out quality patient care while the constant nagging to ensure high-quality documentation is completed as well to protect themselves. NurseBrain is here to ease that pressure and send you, the nurse, back to the bedside doing what you love to do: take care of your patients. 

Mick Hopkins, BSN, RNII is actively practicing as a pediatric nurse with 27 years of experience. Mick is the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of True Concepts Medical Technologies. At HLTH 2024, Mick showcased two products that are leading to better patient outcomes and more efficient utilization of nursing time. The Dual Chamber Syringe is a device that, through its two chambers, delivers the drug followed by a quick saline flush without the hassle of attaching a new syringe after the medication. When it comes to an emergency, milliseconds can be the difference between a life saved or a life lost. Mick is just another nurse innovator who noticed a problem and took matters into his own hands to solve the problem. 

The second product showcased by Mick was the D’VIA which is the “first internationally patented 4-in-1 Dual Chamber Blood Collection System that helps prevent expensive false-positives, false-negatives and process contamination”. Sepsis is the leading cause of death in hospitals, thus creating a device to accurately obtain blood cultures not only saves lives but also saves millions of dollars in healthcare costs. The D’VIA diverts the initial 3ml of “contaminated blood”, isolates 20ml of  “clean blood”, allows the diverted blood to be used for another testing to avoid waste, and then dispenses the correct amount of “clean blood” into each blood culture bottle.  

These products are groundbreaking and practice-changing tools for nurses. 

Maggie Ortiz, MSN, RN, Activist, and Advocate: founder of Advocates for Nurses. Maggie offers tailored healthcare consulting, nurse coaching, and documentation mastery through her work. Maggie is passionate about nurses and ensuring that everyone has ownership over their license protecting themselves and knowing the rights that they have access to. Maggie’s background includes ICU, ER, Cath Lab, and being a private investigator for a Board of Nursing. Maggie uses this experience to educate people on social media @advocates4nurses.  

Maggie has a mission to “ensure nurses receive education, guidance, and advocacy as it pertains to due process”.  In her work, you will find educational resources and expert consulting for nurses seeking legal assistance. Maggie believes that knowledge is power and she is using her knowledge to make all nurses’ lives easier and safer through her work. 

HLTH 2024 was full of so many innovators, specifically nurse innovators. These are just a few of the nurses who are using their knowledge, experience, wisdom, and desire for change to help the nursing community which trickles down to better patient outcomes and overall higher quality healthcare. If you have an idea or see a problem that needs to be solved, use your voice and experience to make a change!