Reimagining Pressure Injury Prevention in Hospital Care

Challenge Overview

Pressure injuries (bedsores) are a common and preventable patient safety issue in hospitals, particularly among patients with limited mobility. Despite established prevention strategies, these injuries continue to occur, suggesting gaps between clinical protocols and real-world practice. This challenge invites students to rethink how pressure injury prevention and management can be improved in acute care settings.

The Problem

Patients in hospitals remain at risk of developing pressure injuries due to prolonged immobility, inconsistent preventative practices, and limitations in current tools and workflows. Existing approaches, such as repositioning schedules, cushions, and specialized mattresses, depend heavily on manual processes and staff capacity, leading to variability in care and missed prevention opportunities.

The Opportunity

There is an opportunity to design solutions that enhance the consistency, responsiveness, and effectiveness of pressure injury prevention. Innovations could better support care teams, improve early detection of risk, and enable more proactive and personalized care while fitting naturally into existing clinical environments.

Design Considerations

• Workflow integration: Must fit into busy hospital routines without adding burden
• Ease of use: Intuitive for healthcare providers, patients, and caregivers
• Reliability: Supports consistent application of prevention strategies
• Patient comfort & dignity: Non-invasive and respectful of patient experience
• Adaptability: Works across different patient populations and care settings
• Data & feedback: Provides meaningful, actionable insights without overload

Potential Directions (not prescriptive)

• Tools that improve monitoring of patient positioning or movement
• Systems that provide real-time alerts or reminders for care teams
• Innovations enabling early detection of pressure injury risk
• Solutions that enhance patient engagement or self-adjustment (where possible)
• Approaches to streamline or automate documentation and tracking
• Smart surfaces, wearables, or sensor-based concepts

Cost Awareness & Benchmarking

• The cost of current prevention tools (e.g., mattresses, cushions, staffing time)
• Whether the solution can reduce downstream costs (e.g., treatment, extended stays)
• Feasibility within hospital budget constraints
• Scalability across units or health systems
• Clear value proposition compared to existing solutions

Impact

• Reduce incidence and severity of pressure injuries
• Improve patient safety, comfort, and outcomes
• Support healthcare providers with more reliable and efficient workflows
• Decrease healthcare system costs associated with preventable harm
• Contribute to higher quality, more consistent care across hospital settings