Strengthening the Role of Nurses in Medical Device Development

Medical devices and innovative technology promise to revolutionize health care. Despite the importance of involving nurses in the collaborative medical device development processes, there are few learning opportunities in nursing programs. The purpose of this article is to provide a conceptual guide for nurse educators and researchers to engage nursing expertise in medical device development processes. A review of the literature guided the creation of the “Strengthening the Role of Nurses in Medical Device Development Roadmap” model. The model was used to describe how nurses can be engaged in multidisciplinary design of medical devices. An academic transdisciplinary team piloted the application of the model. The model includes the stages of needs assessment, planned brainstorm, feasibility determination, concept design, and prototype building. A transdisciplinary team case study of improving an asthma home-monitoring devices illustrates effective application of the model. Nurse leaders in the academic setting can effectively use the “Strengthening the Role of Nurses in Medical Device Development Roadmap” to inform their engagement of nurses in early medical device development and innovation processes. •Nurses bring a distinctive end-recipient centric, person focus to medical device development.•Nurses were historically unprepared for or excluded from multidiscipline device development.•Our model informs educating and including nurses in developing devices.•Model stages include assessing, defining, refining, designing, and prototyping.•The model process was effectively applied to our academic asthma-monitoring device team.