First-Ever NurseHack4Health™ Pitch-A-Thon Awardees Announced
Geisinger, NYU Langone Health & Children’s Hospital of Orange County will receive a total of $260,000 in funding for healthcare workforce well-being solutions.
Boston, MA – Oct. 18, 2022 – SONSIEL - Society of Nurse Scientists Innovators Entrepreneurs & Leaders, Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft, in collaboration with #FirstRespondersFirst and its ALL IN: WellBeing First for Healthcare campaign, have announced the first-ever NurseHack4Health™ Pitch-A-Thon awardees. The awardees, Geisinger, NYU Langone Health and Children’s Hospital of Orange County, will receive $260,000 in grant funding provided by #FirstRespondersFirst to implement new, innovative solutions supporting workforce well-being within their health systems.
“The NurseHack4Health™ Pitch-A-Thon powered up the level of critical thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving needed to address the challenges impacting our healthcare workplace environment,” said Hiyam Nadel, RN, MBA, Director Center for Innovations in Care Delivery at Massachusetts General Hospital and SONSIEL President-elect and Co-Founding member. “Nurses and their peers want to make their workplace environments better and more sustainable. This provided an opportunity for their voices to be heard and to contribute to actionable change within their organizations that could have a positive, industry-wide impact in the years to come.”
In a live virtual session on October 6, the final 10 teams pitched thoughtful initiatives from well-being infrastructure support and work-life flexibility models to staffing automation and virtual patient monitoring.
Of the finalists, the top Pitch-A-Thon teams awarded for their impressive and innovative ideas were:
● Geisinger, Paws to Reflect, a peer intervention and animal-assisted therapy program
● NYU Langone Health, Smart Scheduler, a tech solution driving fairness and efficiency in staffing
● Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Dear Hospital, connection-based storytelling training
The NurseHack4Health™ Pitch-A-Thon: Redesigning a Healthy Work Environment Where the Workforce Can Thrive is supported by a collaboration between SONSIEL, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, #FirstRespondersFirst and ALL IN: WellBeing First for Healthcare. The program provided an opportunity for nurse-led interdisciplinary teams, including physicians, patient care technicians, Human Resources specialists, and members of Information Technology, Engineering, and Leadership, to pitch solutions for their critical healthcare workplace and well-being challenges.
“The NurseHack4Health™ Pitch-A-Thon gathered teams from the nation’s top health systems to provide valuable insights and solutions to problems that desperately need to be addressed in the nursing profession,” said Nico Sciasci, MS, FIEL Executive Director, SONSIEL. “This program created the opportunity to tangibly support initiatives to improve the future of nursing and workplaces across the country. The innovative ideas we’ve seen inspire us to think about all the ways we can contribute to improving the well-being of those who care for our communities each day.”
"The variety of concepts presented by the finalist NurseHack4Health teams address a multitude of healthcare workplace challenges. Each team demonstrated creative, proactive approaches for building a foundation of support for nurses within their workplaces, such as adding flexibility and autonomy to the workplace, improving efficiency, shoring up staffing and expanding access to well-being resources,” said Kasia Laskowski, Executive Director, Thrive Global Foundation and founding partner of #FirstRespondersFirst. “But just as important, the teams and their proposed solutions brought a tremendous amount of hope to all those watching. The judges were so impressed by the incredible strength and scalability of the pitches that #FirstRespondersFirst decided to add additional grant funding and further extend the support to these innovations.”
To learn more about the NurseHack4Health™ Pitch-A-Thon, click here.
ABOUT SONSIEL
SONSIEL is a national and international platform for nurses to engage and advocate for nursing’s role in influencing and directly impacting health and the healthcare ecosystem through innovation and entrepreneurship. Nurses are on the front lines, working with all healthcare team members to keep patients and the community safe. For more information about SONSIEL, please visit https://sonsiel.org/. Follow SONSIEL on LinkedIn (@SONSEIL), Twitter (@SONSIELNurse); Facebook (@SONSIELnurse); and Instagram (@SONSIELNURSE).
ABOUT MICROSOFT
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Learn more at Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare | Microsoft.
ABOUT #FIRSTRESPONDERSFIRST and ALL IN: WellBeing First for Healthcare
#FirstRespondersFirst, an initiative of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Thrive Global and Creative Artists Agency, takes a whole human approach to addressing the needs of frontline health care workers in order to support their ability to serve on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Through its campaign, ALL IN: WellBeing First for Healthcare, launched in partnership with the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes' Foundation and leading healthcare organizations, #FirstRespondersFirst is working to advance solutions to improve the well-being of the healthcare workforce and eliminate persistent mental health and well-being challenges that disadvantage our healthcare workers, and therefore, the future of public health. #FirstRespondersFirst is a fund of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that meets all 20 Better Business Bureau charity standards and carries the GuideStar Platinum Seal of Transparency.
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