Beyond the Prize: How Patient Safety Technology Challenge Winner Crimson Medical Solutions Continues to Detangle the Problem of IV Management

What specific patient safety issue or personal experience inspired your innovation, and how did you identify the gap in the current healthcare system that your solution addresses?
Crimson Medical Solutions was founded during our senior capstone project at Washington State University, driven by a shared concern for the well-being of nurses whom we know personally. We recognized that burnout and stress were common, and we wanted to find a way to help. Through early surveys and interviews, a recurring issue surfaced: nurses repeatedly cited the challenge of managing tangled, poorly labeled IV lines and often referred to them as "IV spaghetti." We were struck by the fact that many hospitals still rely on tape and handwritten labels, despite the high stakes of IV medication administration. This outdated practice highlighted a critical gap in tools provided to nurses, and we set out to design a better solution.

What were/are the major challenges you face(d) during development, and how did you overcome them?

We’re currently transitioning from product development into commercialization, following our official product launch at the 2024 American Organization of Nurse Leaders conference. Our design is protected under U.S. Patent No. 11,027,057 and offers a simple, intuitive approach to IV-line labeling and organization.

Because IV-line management is so tightly embedded in nursing workflows, usability has been our top priority. A solution is only valuable if it's actually used in practice. We’ve iterated our design through continuous feedback from simulated use sessions and pilot studies, refining not only the product but also its packaging, training materials, and implementation process.

A key turning point was bringing on Caleb Williams, a nurse with ICU and ER experience, as our chief clinical officer. His frontline experience helped shape our design to meet real-world needs. Access to ICU environments for testing has been a consistent challenge, but we’ve worked around it with creative internal testing methods and strategic clinical pilots.

Have you conducted any pilot studies or trials? If so, what were the outcomes? What steps have you taken/are you working toward to ensure compatibility with current healthcare systems and practices?

We’ve conducted multiple simulated use sessions and three clinical pilots: two in critical access hospitals and one in a larger ICU. These studies helped us refine our product and identify its best-fit use cases in high-acuity and medium-acuity units.

Our IV Manager aims to demonstrate two key outcomes: saving nurses time to reinvest into quality care and patient safety. Studies on better IV-line management practices support the impact our product can have. In our latest ICU pilot, 96.2% of nurses approved of the product, 73.1% of all participating nurses preferred the IV Manager to current methods, and this increased to an 89.5% preference among nurses with fewer than 15 years of experience. Usability feedback from these pilots has directly informed our latest design iteration.

To quantify the time savings and clinical benefits, we’re collaborating with the University of Washington School of Nursing to obtain Small Business Technology Transfer funding from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a formal study assessing both workflow efficiency and potential impact on patient safety. Data from these upcoming trials will support broader integration efforts across health systems.

How are you addressing potential barriers to access, especially in underserved communities? How are you addressing integration into current health systems?

We prioritize access to our product so that it can make a broad impact on nurses and patients.

Our early pilots took place in critical access hospitals, underserved communities that are often excluded from early innovations. Based on those experiences, we’ve introduced a critical access hospital discount to ensure that safety and efficiency aren't limited by geography or size.

The IV Manager is designed for quick and easy integration. Unlike digital health solutions that require IT infrastructure, our product can be trialed and implemented within weeks, not months. Once a hospital approves its use, it can be quickly trialed and rolled out across additional units or facilities within a system, without disruption to care delivery.

How has the Patient Safety Technology Challenge impacted the trajectory of your innovation? What is next for Crimson Medical Solutions?

The Patient Safety Technology Challenge was a major milestone in our journey. The non-dilutive funding allowed us to execute our ICU pilot and validate the clinical need and usability of our product. Just as importantly, the recognition elevated our visibility and plugged us into a growing ecosystem of nurse-led innovation.

Through this network, we connected with leaders like Rebecca Love and joined the NurseApproved community. These connections led us to exhibit in the Nurse Innovator Pavilion at both ViVE and AONL [American Organization for Nursing Leadership], where we launched the IV Manager and secured several upcoming pilots and potential early adopters starting June 24th.

If you could give one piece of advice to an early innovator, what would it be?

To early-stage innovators, our biggest piece of advice is to work hard on making progress on your idea and continually grow your network. People want to help you. We have received so much support from other entrepreneurs and love paying it forward. We are happy to connect with and offer advice to other nursing and healthcare entrepreneurs.