Nurse innovators pursue ideas to improve patient care, build new devices

Editor's Note

Nurses are becoming innovators at the MakerHealth Space at the University of Texas Medical Branch-Galveston---a workspace where they can brainstorm ideas for healthcare innovations that will improve patient care, and they can build prototypes of their ideas.

MakerHealth Space began as an expedition site for a concept from the Little Devices Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, termed “MakerNurse.”

Engineers from MIT travel to Texas once a month to help with ideas and train the trainers. Many nurses have taken advantage of the space and have turned out interesting and useful devices, the April 12 Medscape reports.

There isn't anything new about nurses coming up with makeshift solutions to patient care problems, but giving nurses the space, equipment, and support to invent and create was unheard of--before now.