“Shark Tank for Nurses”: First-Ever Dartmouth Health Nursing Innovation Hackathon Engages Nurses to Contribute to Change in Healthcare
In their daily work caring for patients, nurses are innovators, change-makers, problem solvers, engineers, and more. Their experience in “front line” healthcare settings gives nurses an outstanding ability to identify unique issues that exist in a hospital and possible solutions to solve them.
Dartmouth Health recently hosted a two-day event dedicated to the contributions of nursing to creating healthcare change and empowering the distinctive voices of nurses in making that change. The first-ever Nursing Innovation Hackathon brought together registered nurses, nurse practitioners, medical assistants, licensed nursing assistants and licensed practical nurses from around Dartmouth Health to pitch innovations for solving the problems they encounter on a daily basis.
“This first Hackathon was a pilot to see what would happen when we put nurses in a room, gave them the tools for design thinking, and empowered them to think out of the box,” said Briana L. White, DNP, RN, CPN, CCRN-K, CNL, manager of clinical quality and care management at Dartmouth Health’s Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire, who organized the Hackathon. “What came out of it was exciting and inspiring. There were innovative solutions, empowered teams, new collaborations, and a shared energy to transform healthcare.”
The Hackathon was held on January 26 and 27 at Dartmouth Health’s Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC). Described as “Shark Tank for nurses,” participants were divided into five teams to learn about design thinking, how to pitch a problem, the future of artificial intelligence (AI), and how to move ideas forward to reality. Each team then pitched their innovative solutions to a team of judges made up of nurses from DHMC, Dartmouth Health and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice’s Levy Incubator, the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship at Dartmouth, and Massachusetts General Hospital.
The winning team created a “Go-Getter” strap, which helps to get two wheelchairs as opposed to one to help expedite discharges. Their prize included books on nursing innovation and a six-month mentorship with nursing innovation experts to advise the team on bringing their proposed improvement to life.
Second place went to a team that proposed an automated prior authorization system through the support of AI to help expedite approval of care, prescriptions and tests from insurance companies that otherwise delay care. The third prize-winning team pitched a tracking system similar to UPS notifications that would allow patients in the clinic awareness into when their inpatient bed would be ready when they are waiting on it, to reduce anxiety and improve transparency of communication..
“Nurses are the backbone of our healthcare system. The creativity that they demonstrate every day to solve problems is perhaps as valuable to their patients and colleagues as are their clinical skills,” said Susan A. Reeves, EdD, RN, chief nursing executive of Dartmouth Health and executive vice president of DHMC. “The nursing professionals who took part in our first Hackathon, and the innovations they developed, are prime examples of how nurses have the power to transform healthcare.”
All 12 Hackathon participants received a one-year membership to SONSIEL (Society of Nurse Scientists Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Leaders).