Australian Nurse Innovators Ltd./Hackin RooBears

The challenge: Nursing students are increasingly expected to graduate not only as competent clinicians but also as leaders, researchers, and policy advocates. However, many undergraduate programs do not offer consistent or accessible pathways to build these advanced competencies.

The solution: The Hackin RooBears team, a cross-national collaboration of nurses and students from Australia and Canada, set out to change that after meeting at the ICN Student Assembly in Helsinki. Through Train the Trainer, the team developed a student-led innovation curriculum designed to teach nursing students and new graduates how to design, test, and implement solutions through localized hackathons.

The model builds a network of peer facilitators – nurses teaching nurses – who can replicate the program nationally with minimal resources. In its pilot phase, the program will train 10 facilitators and reach 50 students, with plans to expand to over 300 participants within three years. By embedding innovation early in nursing education, the Hackin RooBears are cultivating a generation of nurse leaders equipped not just to adapt to change but drive it.

Grant funding will support mentorship opportunities, regional equity access, and seed grants for student-led projects, as well as the development of an online training platform and national student innovation forums.

Boston College – Design for Healthy Aging Group

The challenge: For patients experiencing delirium, agitation, or confusion, particularly older adults, hospital care can feel frightening and disorienting. This is a reality for 1-in-4 hospitalized patients – with nurses often having limited options to keep patients safe: sedation, sitters, or physical restraints that don’t enable them to address signs of distress before escalation. The iSense team, a cross-institutional collaboration between Boston College and Massachusetts General Hospital, envisioned a way to restore calm, dignity, and connection through sensory engagement rather than restriction.

The solution: iSense is an AI-supported, multi-sensory care platform designed to detect early signs of delirium and deliver personalized comfort interventions in real-time. It combines an AI curator app that guides nurses through early warning signs and patient preference intake with a five-sense toolkit: a bedside or mobile cart stocked with safe sensory material. Together, they empower nurses to create tailored, evidence-based sensory care experiences that reduce agitation, improve patient satisfaction, and support family involvement.

The team is seeking grant funding to support development of the AI platform and toolkit prototype, usability testing at MGH, and more.

Mayo Clinic

The challenge: Nurses across all units are spending 20-40 minutes per discharge coordinating social services — time that could be spent providing clinical care. For complex patients like trauma cases, this coordination can exceed 2 hours, leading to preventable re-admissions, increasing administrative burden, and costing systems billions annually. Even so, trauma patients often leave with lists of community resources with no way to use them.

The solution: Maslow.AI is an intelligent, patient-facing platform that connects trauma survivors to essential resources like housing, medication, and transportation via mobile app, web portal, text or voice call. The AI agent screens for social needs, pre-fills applications, and tracks progress, cutting nurse coordination time by up to 85%. Integrated directly into discharge workflows and turns paper lists into personalized recovery plans.

Grant funding will support the pilot, platform development, and evaluation of an evidence-based framework for discharge planning.

Thomas Jefferson College of Nursing & Jefferson Health System

The challenge: New nurses often leave school confident in theory but untested in real-time judgment. Nursing lacks scalable, objective tools to assess and advance competency across both students and practicing nurses, leaving critical gaps in clinical reasoning, feedback, and professional growth. As a result, medication, documentation, and communication errors remain common, worsened by faculty shortages and limited practice opportunities.

The solution: The Competency AI Vignette Evaluation (CAI’VE) tool uses AI-driven, video-based solutions to help nurses strengthen their decision-making skills in a safe, interactive environment. Students practice real-world scenarios, receive tailored feedback, and build clinical confidence, while faculty gain measurable insights into competency and progress. CAI’VE bridges the gap between classroom learning and bedside readiness, helping every new nurse start stronger and deliver safer patient care.

The team seeks grant funding for platform development, pilot testing, and creating 50 AI-scored vignettes mapped to national standards.

Blythedale Children’s Hospital

The challenge: Traditional hospital identification bands can be distressing or intolerable for many children, especially those with autism, medical trauma, or sensory sensitivities. When they’re removed or refused, patient ID compliance can drop below 60%, increasing the risk of medication and documentation errors.

The solution: SafeSticker is a skin-safe, waterproof medical-grade sticker or temporary tattoo that replaces the traditional wristband. Each sticker displays the patient’s identifying information and a barcode for EMR scanning, designed with child-friendly themes and sensory-sensitive materials. The result: higher compliance, fewer verbal workarounds, and safer care for patients and providers alike.

Grant funding will support prototype design, EMR integration, staff training, and more. Created by frontline pediatric nurses and child life specialists, SafeSticker reimagines identification as comfort-driven care, starting in pediatrics and scaling beyond.

Montana State University – Mark & Robyn Jones College of Nursing

The challenge: Nurses, particularly in rural and community settings, need a way to quickly access accurate clinical trial safety information because current tools like wallet cards or EHR notes are often missing, outdated, or inaccessible. More than 75% of clinical trials are now hybrid, meaning patients often return home between visits and receive care from nurses who aren’t part of the research team. Without access to up-to-date trial safety information, these nurses may unknowingly make medication or treatment errors, contributing to adverse events and preventable patient leakage.

The solution: TrialWear is a nurse-led innovation that uses a smart patch, mobile platform, and predictive analytics to close the safety gap between clinical care and research. When worn by a patient, the waterproof patch transmits de-identified clinical trial data to local nurses via QR scan and geospatial alerts, ensuring their access to real-time, accurate safety details at the bedside. Paired with TrialAware, the analytics dashboard, the system uses AI to predict risks, map trial engagement, and optimize resource planning across sites.

Grant funding will support prototype manufacturing, pilot implementation at partner hospitals, and more.

Hospital Moinhos de Vento (Brazil)

The challenge: Nurse burnout is a worldwide problem. Nearly 70% of nurses show signs of disengagement at work or “quiet quitting,” and more than half report symptoms of exhaustion or burnout. Hospitals face rising turnover and declining morale, with costly ripple effects on patient safety and workforce sustainability.

The solution: Hospital Moinhos de Vento’s PulseCare is an AI-driven well-being and reintegration platform that detects early signs of nurse disengagement and burnout and supports recovery after mental health leave. Through daily mood check-ins, predictive analytics, and personalized interventions, it alerts leaders to emerging risks and provides pathways for support and reintegration. This means proactive care for the caregivers—and measurable improvements in retention, satisfaction, and patient outcomes.

Grant funding will support pilot information, platform development, and AI model refinement. Created by nurses and leaders in one of Brazil’s top hospitals, PulseCare transforms silent suffering into actionable insight.

Fundación Cardiovascular de Colombia & Hospital Internacional de Colombia

The challenge: Nurse workloads across Colombia are often assigned without consideration of patient complexity, leading to burnout, turnover, and reduced quality of care. More than 40% of nurses report caring for more patients than planned, and 25% manage ratios as high as 1:15. This results in stress, preventable errors, and a cycle of fatigue that threatens both patient outcomes and staff retention.

The solution: SCOPEn—Software for Care Optimization & Professional Efficiency of Nursing—uses real-time data and AI algorithms to balance workloads, forecast staffing needs, and support professional development. Its four modules help nurse leaders assign care based on patient acuity, support continuous learning, and monitor team satisfaction.

The team will use grant funding to support software design, development, and pilot implementation.

The Empowered Nurses Network (Nairobi County, Kenya)

The challenge: In busy maternity wards, nurses often monitor multiple mothers in labor using paper partographs, which are manual charts prone to error and delay. Missed warning signs can turn manageable complications into life-threatening emergencies. In Nairobi, maternal deaths remain at 132 per 100,000 live births, and stillbirths at 17 per 1,000 – rates that reflect a system stretched beyond capacity.

The solution: The e-Partograph Initiative replaces paper charts with a digital, nurse-designed platform that automates plotting, flags early warning signs, and integrates WHO-based decision prompts. Built for low-resource environments, the tablet-based tool functions offline, syncs with county EMRs, and provides real-time alerts for birth complications. It’s the first locally designed, scalable solution tailored to Kenya’s clinical realities.

Grant funding will support training for 200 nurses, deployment of 250 tablets, and system integration with the county health network. Backed by the Nairobi County Health Directorate, Amref Health Africa, and the Ministry of Health’s Digital Health Agency, this initiative empowers nurses to act faster, prevent complications, and give every mother and baby a safer start.

Nephrohaven Foundation

The challenge: Chronic kidney disease affects over 4 million Ghanaians, yet fewer than 1,200 receive dialysis due to the high cost and unreliable power that render many machines unusable. Families are often forced to choose between housing and life-saving treatment, while frequent power outages leave public hospitals struggling to maintain care continuity.

The solution: The solar-powered dialysis pilot introduces Ghana’s first nurse-led, renewable-energy dialysis model. Powered by a solar-grid hybrid system, the pilot ensures uninterrupted treatment while reducing energy costs by up to 30%. A tiered financing structure – combining national insurance reimbursement, private payments, and a solidarity fund – makes care affordable and equitable. The pilot will launch with four machines, serving 26 patients each month and providing free sessions for children under 18.

The requested grant funding will support operational costs, patient subsidiaries and program evaluation, building a sustainable model that can be replicated across Ghana and other low-resource regions.

National Nurse Practitioner Entrepreneur Network (NNPEN)

The challenge: As the number of independent nurse practitioner (NP) practices grows, patients and peers alike struggle to find them. Regulatory barriers, billing challenges, and a lack of visibility have left NP-owned practices scattered and hard to identify, leading to limited patient access, referral networks, and opportunities for collaboration.

The solution: Destination NP is a dynamic, data-driven directory and collaboration platform that maps every NP-owned practice in the U.S. Patients can locate care by zip code, specialty, or service area; nurse practitioners can connect, refer, and recruit; and students can find preceptors through an integrated access hub. By coalescing NP practice owners, Destination NP also works to create leverage and negotiate better purchasing contracts, insurance contracts, address policy issues, and advocate support at the state and federal levels to improve NP-led practices and reduce regulatory barriers. As a 501(c)(3), Destination NP also serves as a grant administration to support NP entrepreneurs and strengthen workforce diversity.

Funding will support marketing, platform expansion, and more.

CrossCare Tech

The challenge: The U.S. maternal mortality rate has risen 28% in just four years, with three of the top five causes tied directly to pregnancy outcomes. Social and environmental factors—from nutrition and transportation to housing instability—shape maternal health, yet most clinical systems fail to track or respond to them. Nurses and clinicians are left without tools to translate social data into real-time interventions.

The solution: CrossCare Concierge is a patient-facing maternal health app that integrates wearable data, social determinants of health, and AI-driven support into one bilingual platform. Through a customizable chatbot, the app delivers personalized guidance, tracks habits like sleep and hydration, connects to EMRs, and offers multilingual emotional support in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. Designed for Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), the system bridges clinical care with lived experience—empowering expectant mothers while easing provider workload.

The team is seeking funding for pilot testing at four FQHCs in New Jersey, New York, and Michigan, along with product development, translation, and EMR integration.

InspiroSense Innovations

The challenge: In critical care, nurses still rely on manual tools—like bulky carpenter’s levels—to position pressure transducers for hemodynamic monitoring. The process is slow, imprecise, and risky for fragile patients. Frequent repositioning adds to nurse fatigue and can cause skin injury or disrupt lines.

The solution: InspiroAxis is a compact, nurse-designed device that automates transducer leveling in under 30 seconds. It attaches easily to IV poles or transducer holders, ensuring accuracy, reducing strain, and saving up to 30 minutes per shift. Compatible with existing cardiac monitoring systems, the device improves workflow safety while maintaining data precision.

Funding will support prototype refinement, clinical usability studies, and regulatory preparation through UCLA’s Biodesign Innovation Program. This solution is redefining how critical care teams measure what matters—safely, efficiently, and at every level.