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How We Support Nursing Innovation

Nurse Innovation Hackathons Our Nurse Innovation programming provides unique experiences for nurses to flex their innovation muscles and receive the support and motivation needed to bring their ideas to life and improve human health.

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2025 NurseHack4Health Pitch-A-Thon
Applications open Aug. 18! Participation is free and open globally to nurse-led teams from health systems, nursing organizations, and early-stage nurse-founded startups. Teams must be from the same institution.
Learn more about NurseHack4Health
2025 NurseHack4Health Pitch-A-Thon: Key Dates
  • Applications Open
    August 18, 2025
  • Innovation Acadmey + Info Sessions
    August - September 2025
  • Applications Due
    September 30, 2025
  • Finalists Selected
    October 11, 2025
  • Innovation Accelerator
    October 15 - November 10, 2025
  • Virtual Pitch-A-Thon Event
    November 19, 2025

What is NurseHack4Health?

NurseHack4Health is a community of nurses, healthcare professionals, developers, engineers, IT experts and other innovators focused on ideating and collaborating to address today’s most pressing healthcare challenges.

Through specialized programming, NurseHack4Health empowers participants with the skills and mindset needed to proactively address the dynamic challenges of healthcare. Our community began in 2019 with nurse Hackathons, weekend-long live and virtual events where individual nurses and teams envision and build solutions to real-world challenges.

Why should you attend future NurseHack4Health events?

Through our programming, nurses learn pragmatic ways to redefine complex healthcare issues, foster creative problem solving, prototype innovative solutions through human-AI collaboration, and integrate design methods into nursing practice and to develop a healthcare environment where nurses and patients thrive. 

Ready to start your innovation journey? You can receive up to 2 continuing education credits through the NurseHack4Health Innovation Academy! This three-session, asynchronous learning program offers workshops to power-up your innovation skills through design thinking, creating the perfect pitch, and AI solutions! Learn more and sign up now.

Stay tuned for future NurseHack4Health event announcements coming soon!

Visit the NurseHack4Health website to find out more
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Nurses Leading Innovation
Meet the 2024 NH4H awardees: Two nurse-led innovations transforming care and empowering the profession
Congratulations to the nurse-led teams from the Ghanaian-Diaspora Nursing Alliance and Seattle Children’s Hospital, the 2024 NurseHack4Health Pitch-A-Thon awardees! The two teams will receive a total of $185,500 in grant funding to bring their innovative solutions to life.
2024-11-11T16:47:26.591Z
Meet The Two 2024 Awardee Teams Here
How to prepare
  •
    What to Expect
    Hackathons champion nurse-led innovation by bringing nurses together with people from different professions, in-person or virtually, to “hack” real solutions to health problems in a supportive team setting with peers and mentors. Participants don’t need to come with an idea – just be ready to join a team, examine the problem and dive in to develop a solution. By the end of the hackathon, the goal is for teams to have minimum viable products (MVPs) that can be fast-tracked for further development and implementation in a healthcare setting.

    Attending a hackathon is a great way to bond, brainstorm, develop and pitch healthcare solutions that will forever change the way you think about a problem, your perceived value and impact, and your vision for your future in nursing and healthcare!

    Watch Our NurseHack4Health May 2020 Video
  • Innovation Skills
    What does it take to make the most of a hackathon experience? Understanding fundamental innovation skills—such as problem solving, risk-taking, collaboration and strategic planning—can help you make the most of your time participating in a hackathon.

    Even when you develop a valuable idea, sometimes figuring out what to do next can feel overwhelming.

    Get started today and explore how to unlock your potential to spark innovative health solutions and improve patient care. Be sure to check out the section on Design Thinking for Health – a must-read before any hackathon! Learn more:

    Skills Nurse Innovators Should Develop and Grow
  • What Makes a Good Pitch
    Pitching your idea to a panel of judges is a critical part of the hackathon process. The judges are often well-respected industry experts who will examine how well your idea meets hackathon criteria, such as its viability or impact on human health.

    Each team typically has three to five minutes to present to the judges and answer questions. Assembling a rock star team and developing a valuable idea are critical; however, sometimes teams fall short in making a compelling pitch. Learn more:

    How to Tell Stories that Influence People and Inspire Action

    NurseHack4Health Pitch Template

    How to Win a Pitch
  • Open Source Innovation
    Hackathons can have different goals, such as launching a start-up business or generating ideas for the open market to adopt. As a participant, it’s important to understand your responsibilities as well as the desired hackathon output.

    “Open source” means that no one legally owns or has intellectual property associated with the ideas. People come together to hack for social good and ideas are publicly available to any individual or organization to quickly use or adapt to help solve problems. For NurseHack4Health, participants are asked to post their ideas on GitHub, a collaborative hosting platform where hackers can iterate collectively. Learn more:

    What is Open Source

    Open Source Resources

    GitHub Learning Lab
  • Minimum Viable Product
    The goal of many healthcare hackathons is for teams to develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). A minimum viable product has just enough core features for the solution to be demonstrated or used. Developers then typically deploy the product to potential customers or early adopters who are more likely to give feedback and be able to grasp a product vision from an early prototype. The advantage of developing an MVP is to quickly get a working solution for a pressing problem into the healthcare setting. Learn more:

    Forbes: What Is A Minimum Viable Product, And Why Do Companies Need Them?

    LEANSTACK: What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

    CleverTap: What Is A Minimum Viable Product + Methodologies For Marketers
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