Companies interested in applying to the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) should learn how the health system works and build connections with patients, who can be powerful advocates, says Mindy Simon, NIA's co-director.

Dr. Sarah Hoffe, interim chair of GI oncology at Moffitt Cancer Center, shares how a virtual reality (VR) tool helped relieve a patient's anxiety about undergoing treatment by enabling him to experience a simulation of the procedure.

Nissan Elimelech, founder of Augmedics, explains how the company’s augmented reality surgical technology allows surgeons see a virtual spine overlay directly on a patient during an operation, eliminating the need to look at a monitor.

Gabriel Garcia-Lopez of the Los Angeles LGBT Center talks about how the center is partnering with Lambda Legal to challenge anti-LGBTQ executive orders, defend access to care for its transgender patients and protect their data.

While today's harried nurses are pressed to provide holistic care, Mercy's Tracy Breece says she believes that in five years AI will seamlessly integrate into their workflows and empower them to fully engage with patients.

As nursing continues to evolve, Regina Wysocki, senior informatics program manager at Lone Star Communications, recommends that nurses educate themselves on informatics and digital health trends to provide better care for patients.

Symplr's Tony DiGiorgio says that to address the struggle with entering and managing data across multiple digital tools, his company's platform integrates systems to reduce nurses' workload and give them more time for patient care.

Dr. Michael Kirchhoff, chief innovation officer at Cooper University Health Care, says the health system launched a social determinants of health hackathon to help solve systemic issues faced by its patient population.

The University of Chicago's Julie Johnson says she was recruited out of clinical nursing to become a "translator" between IT teams and clinicians to help turn data into actionable insights that improve patient care.

Baptist Health's Sara Meinke and Asad Tariq says the healthcare organization takes an outcomes-driven approach to lessening clinicians' burdens and enhancing patient care, which led to reaching the highest level of the HIMSS C-COMM maturity model.

After cancer patient Rahul Mahadevan saw other patients delaying or refusing treatment because of non-clinical obstacles, he founded The WiTT Group to create a platform for patients to ask for the help they need, which also generates SDOH data.

Dr. David Kaelber, the health system's chief health informatics officer, describes its imaging interoperability journey: breaking down silos and using VNA, universal viewers and patient portals to share imaging with providers and patients.