The purpose of the Nursing and Engineering Innovation Center is to foster and advance healthcare, workforce, and economic development through interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships between nursing and engineering to promote the ideation, creation, and commercialization of new evidence-based healthcare technologies that address clinical unmet needs for the betterment of healthcare quality (e.g., safe, effective, efficient, equitable, timely, and patient-centered).

The School of Nursing and College of Engineering are known across the country as leaders in innovation within their own disciplines. The Nursing and Engineering Innovation Center will further advance our leadership within the state and the nation by bringing together clinical nursing knowledge, expertise, and science with engineering knowledge that is critical to creating the healthcare technologies needed to address healthcare needs of diverse populations across clinical and community contexts.

Registered nurses today are the largest group of healthcare professionals today at 4 million. Nurses use, develop, test, evaluate, and purchase healthcare technologies to support daily care delivery. Best practices in innovation development indicate the need for end users to be involved in the design of new products. Thus, nurses are in an excellent position to invent and evaluate new technologies because of their knowledge, expertise, and contextual appreciation for health care needs in multiple clinical and community contexts. Engineers have the technical knowledge, skills, and abilities to actualize new technologies. The synergy between these two disciplines in the design process, especially if begun early in the innovation and invention process will lead to lasting benefits and impact on people and society.

The Nursing and Engineering Innovation Center will bring the expertise and interests of the School of Nursing and College of Engineering together to advance healthcare innovation for the state and nation through four core areas of focus: research, education, community engagement, and technology transfer.