\u201cHistorically, health care has been resistant to change,\u201d says Tiffany Kelley<\/a>, the director of the program and the DeLuca Foundation Visiting Professor for Innovations and New Knowledge in Nursing. \u201cHowever, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we as an industry needed to be willing and able to change to keep people as safe as possible while continuing to deliver high quality care.”<\/p>\n Rynkiewicz works with varsity-level athletes, helping to evaluate, diagnose, and rehabilitate injuries and illnesses. When COVID-19 first reached Connecticut back in March, she was forced to work remotely just like many other professionals. That\u2019s when a glaring issue with their workflow came to light \u2013 each athlete\u2019s rehabilitation regimen was in the athletic training facility written out on a piece of paper, which listed the exercises they were supposed to do and how often.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the time, it drove me nuts!\u201d recalls Rynkiewicz, who has master\u2019s degrees in kinesiology and health care administration and is also a third-year Ph.D. student in the College of Agriculture, Health, and Natural Resources\u2019 Department of Kinesiology<\/a>. \u201cWhen COVID hit, we had to take pictures of the sheets of paper and send it to the athletes so they could do their exercises at home.\u201d<\/p>\n Her coursework in the Healthcare Innovation Online Graduate Certificate program helped her think of an idea to solve this inefficiency \u2013 an app.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be so much easier if there was some kind of application where we can put in the exercises, supply videos of the exercises, talk with the athlete, or even video chat with the athlete \u2013 all in one place,\u201d Rynkiewicz says.<\/p>\n While she has a long way to go to create such an app, Rynkiewicz says she wouldn\u2019t have been able to take her idea even this far without the skills and processes she has learned in her Healthcare Innovation classes.<\/p>\n “I took the opportunity to incorporate emerging innovative solutions into the course each week to bring innovation to life for the class,” Kelley says. “I wanted the students to see the emerging needs due to COVID-19, how health care professionals were responding to those needs, and most importantly, that it was possible to do things differently in health care.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs athletic trainers, we\u2019re always innovating and being creative and trying to come up with new ways of doing things,\u201d Rynkiewicz says. \u201cA lot of things we\u2019ve talked about in our classes have really made me think, \u2018wow I could be doing so much of this at work, applying it in this way or that way.\u2019 There are so many things I\u2019ve looked at differently because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Higgins is no stranger to implementing innovation at work either.<\/p>\n When COVID-19 began to surge in the spring, she was able to leverage her Grab-a-Lab prototype, an innovation she began working on after she was awarded an IDEA grant at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2018.<\/p>\n The hospital\u2019s Innovation Team thought her idea would help with specimen collection during the pandemic and had 50 \u201cGrab-a-Lab\u201d prototypes made. With the prototypes, lab bags do not enter patients\u2019 rooms; nurses can take samples from patients and place them into the Grab-a-Lab in a way that is more efficient and prevents the bag from becoming contaminated.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m so glad I started the Healthcare Innovation Program when I did,\u201d\u00a0Higgins says.\u00a0 \u201cShortly after the start of the program, the pandemic happened, and the importance of my invention surged. It\u2019s perfect timing to be learning more about innovation as my prototype\u2019s reach is expanding.\u201d<\/p>\n But she didn\u2019t stop there. Higgins is also now developing a prototype to help decrease patient isolation and increase family connections during the pandemic.<\/p>\n Working on the bone marrow transplant unit for the past 13 years, Higgins has witnessed many times when patients and families can’t be together, and how difficult this is for both parties.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though the idea came as a result of COVID-19, it\u2019s a problem anyway,\u201d she says. \u201cCOVID-19 has exacerbated patient isolation through very strict visitor policies, or at certain times, a no-visitor policy. It is very important that we keep patients and families connected as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n In a way, she says, that may be the silver lining of the pandemic: industries learning how they can be more efficient and better serve others.<\/p>\n \u201cCOVID-19 certainly has sparked a lot of creative ways to do things,\u201d Higgins says. \u201cIt just shows how the process of innovation is so important and how we need to pivot and do what\u2019s best for patients.\u201d<\/p>\n The Healthcare Innovation Online Graduate Certificate program is teaching Higgins, Rynkiewicz, and other UConn students like them how to do just that.<\/p>\n \u201cThis program has created a roadmap of how to take an idea through the process of innovation, in a step-by-step process,\u201d Higgins says. \u201cI\u2019ve also learned the importance of understanding that there are no setbacks, just learning opportunities. You just have to keep moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s something we all need to be doing,\u201d Rynkiewicz says. \u201cRegardless of what industry you\u2019re in, there is a need or a reason that you can innovate. Even if you don\u2019t realize you\u2019re doing it, you probably are, and this program gives you the tools.\u201d<\/p>\n Learn more about the Healthcare Innovation Online Graduate Certificate program at healthcareinnovation.online.uconn.edu<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n Follow the UConn School of Nursing on\u00a0<\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Instagram<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a>, or\u00a0<\/em>LinkedIn<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UConn’s Healthcare Innovation Online Graduate Certificate program is helping professionals tackle inefficiencies in their fields uncovered by the pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":160160,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2213,1877,2231,2235,2225],"tags":[2251,2243],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2217],"class_list":["post-166943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-nur","category-health-well-being","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-storrs","tag-coronavirus","tag-health-wellness"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 20:40:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166943"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166993,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166943\/revisions\/166993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/160160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166943"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=166943"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=166943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Kelsey-Rynkiewicz-220x300.jpg\")
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