When Nurses Lead, Healthcare Moves: The VIVE 2026 Innovators Rewriting What’s Possible

For decades, nurses have been called the backbone of healthcare, but today, they’re proving they’re also its most powerful engine for innovation. This March at VIVE, one of the industry’s boldest digital health gatherings, nurses will take center stage at the Nurse Innovators Pavilion, showcasing solutions built from the front lines outward.

These founders and creators aren’t guessing at healthcare’s pain points — they’ve lived them. The Pavilion brings together nurse-led companies tackling the system’s most entrenched challenges: staffing shortages, patient safety, workflow inefficiencies, digital access, and the widening gap between what clinicians need and what technology delivers. From scrappy early-stage startups to rapidly scaling ventures, these innovators are demonstrating something the industry can no longer ignore: When nurses build solutions, healthcare finally starts working the way patients and clinicians deserve.

2026 Nurse Innovators

Humla Health: Jessica Sylvester

Humla's streamlined, tech driven platform provides your health system care facility with the ability to fill open shifts per diem to long term assignment quickly with credentialed W-2 nurses, helping to manage patient safety and staff burnout without the agency cost. We were built by nurses, for nurses. We've experienced burnout, staffing shortages, and resource limitations first hand. We've felt the stress of trying to fill in the gaps and making tough financial decisions. With Humla Health, you can: -Increase Patient Safety -Budget with more confidence -Manage Risk and Surge Plans -Fill shifts on demand. 

Avail Health: Joe Harrison

Joe is a trailblazer dedicated to making a difference in health care. With a decade of experience leading behavioral health initiatives for a value-based care health plan, Joe shifted his focus to building a digital health company that partners with health plans and ACOs to improve outcomes for adults and seniors with chronic medical and behavioral health needs.

Passionate about connecting the dots to drive positive change, Joe is committed to serving vulnerable and underserved populations. Joe immigrated to the US from England as a young student and, as a first-generation college student, he went on to earn his bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley and later a Master’s of Science in Nursing from Seattle University. His diverse professional background spans international economic development, entrepreneurship in hospitality, and teaching in inner-city schools. Joe is an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner, specializing in primary care, geriatrics, and behavioral health. When he's not working, Joe enjoys life getting to know Ithaca, NY where he recently moved with his wife and two young children. 

Primary care, the bedrock of our health care system, is facing a crisis of equity, accessibility, and quality, especially for underserved and chronically ill adults and seniors. There is an absence of integrated and person-centered solutions that address system deficits, like inadequate behavioral health resources. Meanwhile, hospital nurses are overburdened, underappreciated, and often constrained by a system that doesn’t fully recognize their potential. These challenges demand a bold, innovative response—one that not only addresses immediate needs but also reimagines the future of health care.

Manage You: Sarah Bellenger

 

 

Manage You is a secure credential management app that works for both clinicians and their organizations, providers stay organized, teams get visibility, and nothing falls through the cracks.

As a clinical leader, I watched skilled providers get delayed for weeks over missing documents. Problems that rippled through entire teams and schedules. Then it happened to me. One lost diploma cost me six weeks of work and cost the surgery center six weeks of lost coverage. I built Manage You because the fix isn't chasing clinicians for paperwork. It's giving them one secure place to stay organized. When providers are ready, teams move faster.

Duality Systems: Laurel Chiaramonte and Cindi Brothers

Balance Scheduler uses advanced scheduling algorithms to respect nurse preferences while improving staff utilization, reducing burnout, and eliminating manual scheduling work. It grew out of a very real nursing challenge. As a bedside nurse on a small med/surg unit, I once spent more than 12 hours creating a 30-day schedule for 40 nurses—and despite the effort, no one was ever truly happy with the result. Seeing this firsthand, my husband—a computer programmer and PhD-trained industrial engineer—recognized that scheduling wasn’t a people problem, but a systems problem. Together, we founded Duality to bring clinical experience and engineering expertise together. The result is Balance Scheduler, a platform designed to turn hours of scheduling work into minutes, supporting more workable and predictable staffing, and reducing burnout so nurses can stay focused on patient care.

Altvis Medical: Kathleen Reyes

As healthcare digitized, it became impossible to ignore a painful reality: our work multiplied, and so did our mental load. The time, energy, and emotional capacity meant for patients were quietly stolen by screens and systems. Nurse burnout isn’t a buzzword—it's a lived experience. I once timed myself for an hour and realized nearly 75% of it was spent typing into the EMR. We didn’t sign up to be shackled to computers; we signed up to care for people. Now, in an era of incredible scientific advancement—with rising patient volumes, shrinking staffing, and increasingly complex needs—I’m on a mission to reduce that burden by building smarter, more efficient systems that serve clinicians, patients, and the entire healthcare ecosystem.

About NurseApproved

Nurse Approved exists to help healthcare companies tap into the expertise of the people who understand patient care best: nurses.

Their mission is grounded in a simple truth:

“Healthcare is broken. Costs are out of control. Delivery systems are straining. Patients are fed up and caregivers are burnt out. We can do better, and your product may be part of the solution.”

As the largest segment of the healthcare workforce, nurses carry a depth of insight that only comes from daily, hands-on responsibility for patient care. Nurse Approved transforms that insight into a rigorous, third‑party evaluation and validation process — the first and only platform of its kind — certifying solutions that nurses deem necessary, effective, and trustworthy.

In 2023, after four years of work with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Nurse Approved earned the inaugural Certification Mark for “Nurse Approved: Tested & Trusted.” The mark leverages the public’s longstanding trust in nurses to accelerate the adoption of innovations that truly improve care.

🤔Nurses, what do you think of the lawsuit? Share your thoughts below.