Innovation: Turning clinician ideas into solutions for healthcare challenges

Jane Hartman, MSN, APRN, CPNP-PC, a pediatric nurse practitioner at Cleveland Clinic, had long dedicated herself to finding ways to prevent catheter-line associated bloodstream infections in pediatric patients. Among her concerns was the unwieldy nature of IV tubing and the potential for contamination and dislodgement. “Children are small, and IV tubing is long and often dragging on the floor,” she says.

So, with the help of her son and a 3D printer, she came up with a concept for an IV carriage system that raises IV lines off the floor. Introduced in 2017, the “High-Line,” as it was called, generated great interest within the pediatric nursing community. But it was slow to move forward.

Then, as COVID was surging, ICU nurses began pulling IV poles and lines outside the doors of patient rooms to save on personal protective equipment and minimize patient exposure, revealing in the process that the High-Line could have applications beyond pediatric units.

Hartman brought the High-Line’s possibilities to the attention of her mentor, Nancy Albert, PhD, Associate Chief Nursing Officer for Research and Innovation at Cleveland Clinic. With the original prototype in use in pediatrics and the ICU, they and others from Cleveland Clinic Innovations proceeded to look for an industry partner to help license, manufacture, market and distribute the High-Line device for broader use. They turned to Medline.

Medline’s legacy and proven success in innovation goes back to its roots in healthcare, when the company’s founder, A.L. Mills, was selling handmade butchers’ aprons to workers in Chicago’s meatpacking district and was approached by nuns at a local hospital to make and sell hospital garments. The company invented the first surgeon’s gown with 360-degree coverage and was among the first to commercialize blue and green fabrics in the OR to decrease eye strain for surgeons and staff.

The High-Line™, an IV carriage system that by raising IV lines off the floor, helps address ambulation and hazardous catheter dislodgement challenges, is among the latest examples of how Medline helps develop, manufacture and distribute innovative and marketable products, services and solutions that advance healthcare for patients and providers.

Medline President Andy Mills goes on to say, “We operate in a very entrepreneurial way. We make decisions quickly and take fast action. Yet, unlike a startup, we have a vast number of resources that can help innovation scale up rapidly.”

In a world where product development can take anywhere from one to three years, consider the end-to-end resources a leader in the industry like Medline has to offer—from discovery to prototyping and commercialization:

• A quality and regulatory team that can help with FDA submissions
• Legal expertise that can protect intellectual property and obtain patents
• Manufacturing capability across a broad range of categories that can be leveraged to bring new products to market cost efficiently
• A distribution network across the United States and in many other countries
• A world-class sales and marketing team with a proven track record of successfully launching new products.

From start to finish, Medline can turn a raw idea or onsite discovery into a fully marketable, often patented, revenue-generating product or solution. Focused on three areas of opportunity—1) what is available today, 2) what can be customized and 3) what can be created, Medline takes an outside-in/inside-out approach to innovation.

On the inside, Medline’s own R&D team and product divisions are focused on finding practical solutions to today’s toughest healthcare problems. The company’s current areas of interest include:

• Infection prevention
• Skin health and wound care
• Transition to home care
• Perioperative efficiency
• Mobility aids
• Sustainable products

On the outside, Medline works with innovation hubs and start-ups as well as frontline healthcare experts—like the pediatric nurse practitioner at Cleveland Clinic—to bring cutting-edge technologies to market.

Wherever ideas come from and whatever phase of their development, the Medline Innovation team screens and validates them for feasibility, then connects them with Medline product managers who live in the business day to day and understand what may or may not be viable in the healthcare marketplace.

To determine fit and feasibility, Medline starts with two key questions the customer and company each must answer:

“What stands out about the High-Line is that it’s a sustainable application that will be addressing a need that goes beyond pediatric and COVID units,” says Connor Feeney, Product Innovation Analyst for Corporate Innovation at Medline. “The prevention and reduction of healthcare-acquired infections have been and will always be an issue the industry will be striving to improve on.”

At any given time, a multitude of ideas and concepts are in various phases of development at Medline that in addition to the High-Line have led to a number of new healthcare offerings, including:

• A low-dose syringe co-created with the Children’s Hospital Association to deliver medications more safely to patients.

• An at-home pre-surgical bathing kit developed with Providence Health & Services that is automatically delivered to a patient, with text reminders to keep patients on track.

• A pediatric bathing kit developed and created with Phoenix Children’s Hospital that makes pediatric bathing easy and fun.

• A hands-free, wearable night light created by Lumify Care, a company founded by two nurses and distributed by Medline, that allows frontline staff to provide care without disturbing a patient’s sleep, also reducing medication administration errors, accidental needle sticks and falls.

Medline has hundreds of thousands of different products and its interests in innovation are extremely broad. If you are a clinician, inventor or start-up working on something interesting that you believe will help solve a problem in healthcare, Medline wants to hear about it. Submit your idea or learn more here.