University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing to launch healthcare and innovation lab in the fall

The University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing is getting into the tech scene.

Fresh off the momentum of this past year’s Game Solutions for Health, where students competed to build the best mobile health tool, the Nursing School is now creating a technology and innovation lab.

The Penn Nursing lab and related year-long course called “Innovation and Tech in Healthcare” aim to be a place for students to develop ideas about the future of healthcare.

Penn Nursing School faculty member Nancy Hanrahan, who organized Game Solutions for Health, is leading the effort. She’ll teach the course and head the lab with engineering and business professors.

She hopes the lab, which will be launched this fall, can encourage entrepreneurial ideas among nursing students. It’ll be a physical space and a community to develop technology solutions to healthcare obstacles — like, say, healthy eating or taking medication. Hanrahan says it’s one of the first interdisciplinary courses of its kind to connect nursing, engineering and business students.

Hanrahan is enthusiastic about the real-life applications of a course like this.

Case in point: One mobile app from last year’s Game Solutions for Health is actually about to be piloted at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

MyDiaText, which won first place in the competition, is a mobile game created by Penn Nursing and Engineering students that uses text message reminders and a point system to motivate diabetic teens to keep up with their chosen health regimen.