Healthcare company-building profile
Nurse Innovators Program
University of Iowa Health Care (UI Ventures, Office of Innovation)
Source-based profile
Program at a Glance
- Program type
- Accelerator
- Program category
- Health system accelerator
- Organization
- University of Iowa Health Care (UI Ventures, Office of Innovation)
- Organization type
- Hospital or health system
- Location
- Iowa City, Iowa
- Company stage served
- Not publicly documented
- Cohort or participation model
- Not publicly documented
- Investment or funding offered
- Not publicly documented
- Published investment terms
- Not publicly documented
- Equity or fee model
- Not publicly documented
- Clinical or hospital connection
- Yes
- Application status
- Active
- Founded
- 2019
Public description
About the program
The Nurse Innovators Program helps nurses and other front-line clinicians across Iowa turn the informal workarounds they invent at the bedside into real, scalable products. Program staff meet with each innovator, assemble a customized materials kit for that specific idea, run ongoing technical check-ins and connect participants to Protostudios for prototype refinement. Innovators typically move through the program in about a year and can compete for funding at an annual Nurse Innovator pitch competition. The program is open to nurses, nursing assistants, nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, physical and occupational therapists, respiratory therapists and chaplains statewide, and is staffed by a Nurse Innovator Liaison who is herself a working MICU staff nurse. It has partnered with MakerHealth and is supported by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation grant funding.
What the program publicly emphasizes
Focus areas and features
- Category: Health system accelerator
Publicly documented people and network
Program leadership and alumni
- Program leader
- Allie Hurt — Associate Director, Iowa Nurse Innovators
- Notable alumni named in public materials
- Droste Drape, a plastic bed base cover by OR nurse Jill Droste that contains surgical fluids and reduces cleaning time between operations; StomaCoach, 3D-printed customized ostomy wafers by pediatric skin/wound/ostomy nurse Kayla Piplani, which won third place and $10,000 at the 2024 pitch competition; Hygiene Tracker by Julie Boothby, nursing practice leader at UIHC; annual Nurse Innovator pitch competition held November 14, 2024 at UI Health Care Medical Center; five years of operation as of 2024; Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation grant support; partnership with MakerHealth
Sources
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