Aim: The purpose of this presentation is to describe the OSU CON’s new Mobile Innovation Studio that is being used to generate new healthcare and health solutions by interprofessional teams.
Methods: The Innovation Studio uses a moveable makerspace and incubator that tours campus encouraging students, faculty, nurses and staff to engage in the interprofessional creation of health and wellness products, solutions, and services. The studio rewards collaboration across disciplines by encouraging interprofessional teams to pitch their ideas and request funding for development. Once funding is awarded, teams have the opportunity to return to the studio as it makes different tour stops across campus to request additional rounds of funding to help them incubate their idea.
Results: In nine months, the Mobile Innovation Studio has completed four tour stops on campus, received 65 innovation submissions from Ohio State students, faculty, nurses and staff, and heard pitches from 53 interprofessional teams. Of these 53 teams, all received a first round of funding to turn their ideas into actions, and six teams have returned to request their second round. To date, over $32,000 in seed grants have been awarded by the Innovation Studio. Twenty-seven of these teams contain at least one Ohio State student. Two provisional patents have been filed on products coming out of the Innovation Studio.
Conclusions: In a short period of time, the OSU CON’s Mobile Innovation Studio is driving innovation throughout a large land grant public university in the Mid-west U.S. The Studio is a replicable model that could be used by other colleges of nursing throughout the world to spark innovation and solutions to the world’s most pressing healthcare and health challenges.