This Nurse Taught Himself Coding and Created an AI App To Giving Nurses Their Time Back

After teaching himself how to code, nurse Samu Mhlambi created an app to revolutionize nursing.

If you've ever started your shift by jotting down report, then hurriedly jotted down a patient structure list for the day before dashing into your patients' rooms to jot down vitals on a scrap piece of paper and thought, 'There has to be a better way,' allow us to introduce you to NurseBrain.AI. 

Available as both an integrated EMR system and an individual app for nurses, NurseBrain.ai functions as a smart nursing assistant, replacing paper report sheets with streamlined digital organization and checklists, and even using patient data to help you plan and organize care. And what's even smarter about NurseBrain.AI? It was founded, created, and coded by a floor nurse who knew nurses deserved better. 

From Immigrant To Nurse To AI Tech Creator and Founder

Samu Mhlambi, RN and founder of NurseBrain.AI, chose a nursing career for the stability and flexibility it offered, along with fulfilling his desire to help others. However, Mhlambi shares that he also has a love for the creative arts. Samu's inspirational LinkedIn post highlights his unique journey:

A Different Kind of Code

After years of working as an LPN and later, an RN, he felt it was time to pursue other passions alongside nursing.

He began dabbling in learning coding a few months before the pandemic hit and then during the pandemic, "really got into it." He enrolled in a few coding classes and after finding a coding language he says really appealed to his visual-minded brain, decided it was time for some hands-on learning. Mhlambi began building his first app and became so immersed in it that he never even finished his coding class. 

But as it would turn out, Mhlambi didn't need to finish the class, because by the time the class was over, he had already successfully built and launched his app: NurseBrain.AI, which he describes as a "second brain" for nurses. "It's a nurse organizer," he says. "It's the replacement of their paper report sheet that nurses currently still use." 

Mhlambi explains that while all nurses use digital charting and computerized systems for patient care, for the minutiae of nursing care, many still rely on a paper sheet to organize workflows. He points out that many Etsy shops even sell paper workflow and report sheets for nursing, noting that their existence alone points to an unmet need. 

NurseBrain.AI transforms the paper report sheet into a digital one and adds AI technology to amplify workflow and care. The platform can:

• Document patient care with voice dictation
• Create report sheets from patient data and/or oral report 
• Create auto checklists from unit-specific templates to plan and organize patient care
• Provide personalized nursing care plan recommendations from evidence-based interventions
• Organize patient care, information, tasks, and notes in one area
• The integrated platform even lets you paste your care notes directly into the EHR or input them with your voice. And of course, the app and platform are all HIPPA-compliant and secure. 

Mhlambi's favorite tool is the report dictation tool—he says that all a nurse has to do is run the app's dictation while receiving report and the app can automatically differentiate between speakers, take notes, and generate a patient profile and SBAR report for you. 

Mhlambi adds that the optimum functionality of NurseBrain.AI is achieved when a hospital purchases the enterprise version (called Axon) and integrates it into its EHR. However, any individual nurse can download the app (called NurseBrain on the App Store or Google Play) to use at work or access the platform through their mobile browser. The basic app—which Mhlambi says contains 80% of its features—is free, but users can also upgrade to the premium version, which offers longer dictation capabilities, more AI-generated SBAR reports, and premade task checklists.  

Mhlambi encourages any nurse who is concerned if their workplace will allow the app to speak with their manager or supervisor before downloading and to share the app's HIPPA compliance. He also encourages nurses interested in bringing the platform to their hospitals to reach out to NurseBrain.AI so they can connect with administrators. 

Personalized Care Beyond a Checklist

Mhlambi explains that NurseBrain.AI uses its built-in intelligence to tailor care plans to individual patients and their situations. The app doesn't just spit out a generic diabetes or CHF plan—instead, it creates a care plan that uses the actual values you input about your patient. 

As an example, he notes that the app can instruct a nurse with a patient who has CHF or sepsis what labs and specific lab values to watch, as well as what to do it the patient has a dangerous lab result. He also notes that the AI the platform uses is far beyond the chatGPT that anyone can access. NurseBrain.AI is instead using a large language model from Google that's been trained on medical knowledge. 

"So when we provide those recommendations, it is coming from this evidence-based language model that was trained on medical literature and reviewed by actual medical professionals," he says. 

The app can even help a nurse identify signs of human trafficking based on its ability to recognize patterns and associated red flags. As a nurse inputs information about a patient, the app can automatically detect and alert the nurse if any human trafficking risk is detected. 

"There are cases where AI can act as a second set of eyes, rather than as a replacement of nurses," Mhlambi says. "It can help me say, 'Hey, you know what? There might be something that you didn't pick up on.'"

Making Patient Care Safer

While NurseBrain.AI is undoubtedly helpful for nurses, Mhlambi also points out the importance the platform can have for improving the safety of patient care. He explains that in doing research prior to making the app, he studied the literature about medical errors—reported as high as the third leading cause of death in the U.S.—and how many of those errors can be traced back to communication breakdowns, especially during transitions of care. 

"That includes things like handoff or handing off from the OR to the PACU, or the PACU to Med-Surg, for example," Mhlambi says. "So just the different situations and scenarios where information is being handed over about a patient from one provider to the next—about 80% or so of the communication breakdowns take place during that timeframe, and the reason is because the communication style is not standardized."

"Even in hospitals, each nurse has their own 'brain' sheet or report sheet," Mhlambi adds. "So inevitably, while every nurse thinks they give great reports, when we're looking at this at a systematic level, it turns out that when everyone has their own version of report sheet eventually, inevitably, some information falls through the cracks, and that leads to those medical errors."

In creating a standardized SBAR framework through NurseBrain.AI, Mhlambi hopes the risk of medical errors due to "lost in translation" communications can be reduced. 

Labor of Love 

As a long-serving nurse himself, Mhlambi calls the journey to hand-coding and creating his app a "labor of love." Unlike some nurse entrepreneurs that he says may prefer approaching innovation from a financial standpoint, he initially had trouble even charging for his app and offered it free for a full two years. 

"In wanting to sustain this long term, I realized that there has to be some revenue coming in," Mhlambi says. While he prefers that that revenue come from the hospitals, he adds that he "settled at a happy medium" with the individual app being 80% free. To Mhlambi, it was incredibly important to keep the app accessible. 

"I didn't want anyone who wanted the app to not be able to afford the app, or to have access to the app," he notes. "That's really important to me. Actually, as a foreign-born nurse, I really wanted even nurses in third countries (and we do have nurses in third countries, by the way, who use the app) to be able to use the app".

"I wanted any nurse in the world, regardless of their zip code or their country code, or the ability to pay to still be able to to access tools that can help them provide high-quality care to their patients," he adds. 

25,000+ Downloads and Growing! 

Mhlambi also hopes that the over 25,000 nurses who are already using NurseBrain.AI will play a role in what he hopes the app represents—innovating the healthcare space with nurse-led solutions. "We're looking at automating workflows, identifying bottlenecks, and seeing what nurses are doing, how it affects hospitals, how nursing workload affects patient outcomes, how it affects nursing outcomes, etc," he says. "We're really creating a unique way to improve hospital operations from the ground up, starting with nurses.

Now pursuing his DNP, Mhlambi shares that his desire to see the app become a transforming driver in the healthcare space traces back to what he believes is the under-valuing of nurses.

"As a nurse, I've often felt like we're marginalized," he says. "You know, we're not really looked at with the respect that we deserve or the dignity. Unfortunately, that also tends to happen in decisions made by the hospitals,  if they need to make budget cuts, then nurses are often the first on the chopping block, right?" 

"The supplies not being there, the nursing, the staffing not being adequate—there are many examples where nurses are not really respected for the importance that they bring to the table," he adds. "So what I really want to do is to continue to innovate in the healthcare space, but also make visible the crucial role that nurses play, not just at the front lines, but also improving hospital operations and in the healthcare industry overall." 

From a nurse who was able to hand-code an app in less than 6 months, it seems Mhlambi just might be up to the challenge. 

Check out NurseBrain for yourself and nab a lifetime premium subscription at 50% off with the code NURSE50.

📌 Nurses, share your thoughts in the comments below!