Seven teams of students showcased their innovation knowledge and abilities to a panel of judges at the InnovateHealth PitchFest powered by Beekley Medical.

The event was part of NURS 1150: Introduction to Healthcare Innovation. Taught by Tiffany Kelley, Ph.D., MBA, RN, NI-BC, FNAP, FAAN, the course introduces innovation as a concept and its applications to healthcare, guiding students through design thinking methodology and prototype development. This was the first semester the course was offered. Thirty-nine students enrolled in the class, with half the students majoring in nursing and nearly all in their first or second academic year at UConn.

“Week by week, the students learned not only how to develop their own innovative behaviors and discovery skills but also how to work in teams to combine their collective areas of expertise and interests to address a healthcare challenge they identified through their own experiences,” said Kelley, professor in residence and co-director of the Nursing and Engineering Innovation Center.

PitchFest gave students the opportunity to apply what they learned throughout the semester by developing their own healthcare innovations and potential inventions. Each team identified a healthcare problem and, through discovery and design thinking, developed an initial prototype as a solution. The students presented a semester’s worth of work in five-minute presentations to a panel of judges—an impressive feat noted by both Kelley and the judges.

The judging panel included Leila Daneshmandi, Ph.D., assistant professor in residence in the College of Engineering and co-director of the Nursing and Engineering Innovation Center with Kelley; UConn Nursing Assistant Professor Christina Ross, Ph.D., RN; and Michael McGuire, MBA, director of strategic growth and innovations at Beekley Medical.

“UConn is a pillar in our state for education, healthcare, and innovation, and bringing these three disciplines together—while providing students with mentorship, guidance, and a creative outlet—continues to produce commercially viable ideas in an impressive timeframe,” said McGuire.

Beekley Medical sponsors the InnovateHealth PitchFest, and to celebrate the students’ hard work, two awards were presented: Greatest Impact Potential, awarded to Smart Queue Health, and Most Innovative, awarded to Pill Bright.

SmartQueue Health — Kyle Orzolek ‘29 (NUR), Alana Williams ‘29 (NUR), Emma Leonardo ‘29 (NUR), Paityn Caron ‘29 (NUR), and Kate Dannenberg ‘29 (NUR) — prototyped a real-time queue app designed to close the communication gap between patients and clinics around appointment wait times.

“It’s a problem that everyone faces,” said McGuire, noting its relatability and potential impact across a large population.

Pill Bright — Ryann Barba ‘29 (NUR), Aubrey Estrada ‘28 (NUR), Kaitlin Cannavaro ‘29 (NUR), Marisa Anderson ‘29 (NUR), and Anna Stratidis ‘29 (MCB) — took a different approach, designing a watch that lights up in specific colors or shapes to remind older adults which pills to take and when. Their goal was to address both medication non-adherence and health literacy gaps among older patients, particularly those recently discharged from the hospital.

Further recognizing the students’ hard work, every team received a $500 award to continue developing their prototypes, along with the opportunity to meet with McGuire to discuss their projects further. The winning teams each received an additional $500 to advance their ideas.

“Several of this year’s innovations, if brought to fruition, could meaningfully improve the lives of patients and healthcare providers alike,” said McGuire.

Kelley commented on the partnership with Beekley Medical, saying, “Having this academic-industry partnership offers students the opportunity to learn and apply the science while also forming a strategy that aligns with current and future industry needs and established practices.”

A common theme across all seven presentations was patient privacy and accessibility to easy-to-understand medical information.

“What was unique about this group of students was how they all focused on the person side of healthcare. They also identified new categories of information needs that we could now address in 2026 and beyond,” noted Kelley.

Many teams focused on health literacy gaps and built their prototypes around solving them while keeping HIPAA compliance and patient-centered design at the forefront. As one student put it during their presentation, “Our role as innovators is to put the patient first.”

“At its core, innovation is about making the world a better place, and that purpose was evident in every pitch presented,” said McGuire. “The students and faculty should be incredibly proud of what they’ve accomplished through this program, and I look forward to seeing many of these ideas make a real difference in the years ahead.”