Nurture
Labour-saving technological innovations for nurses
Convergence Health & Technology Sustainable Health Programme
Enhancing job satisfaction for nurses
The nursing profession is facing a critical shortage, a challenge expected to intensify in the coming years. Nurses work in highly demanding environments and often spend valuable time on repetitive tasks, logistics and administrative work instead of direct patient care.
Within the Convergence Health & Technology Sustainable Health Program NURTURE, nurses, engineers, designers, social scientists and implementation experts from Erasmus MC, TU Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam work together to co-create practical technological innovations that improve daily work processes, job satisfaction and sustainable employability. The program focuses on solutions that are not only innovative, but also practical, usable and meaningful in daily healthcare practice.
By developing solutions together with healthcare professionals – not simply for them – NURTURE aims to contribute to a meaningful and sustainable future of nursing work.
I don't think that in the practical, holistic profession that we have, you can just think of a robot that takes over everything from me, because it is still people work.
Laura, ICU Nurse
What NURTURE works on
NURTURE studies how technologies, workflows and organizational practices can better support nurses in daily care. The program focuses on practical challenges experienced on the healthcare floor, including time-consuming material searches, repetitive routines, administrative burden and physically demanding tasks such as patient repositioning.
A central principle is co-creation. Nurses actively participate in workshops, shadowing sessions, interviews and pilot projects to help shape innovations that fit real clinical practice. Research activities include workflow analyses, opportunity identification workshops and implementation studies.
The program explores innovations ranging from low-tech quick wins to more advanced digital and robotic technologies. These may include smarter logistics, transport support, documentation assistance and technologies that help reduce physically demanding tasks. Alongside technology development, NURTURE studies how innovations can realistically be embedded into healthcare organisations and daily nursing practice. The program also aims to support nurses in actively shaping and championing innovation within clinical practice.
NURTURE contributes to broader discussions on how healthcare systems can remain sustainable in the face of growing nursing shortages and increasing workload pressures. The program explores how technology can support nurses without losing the human and relational aspects of care that are essential to the profession. The program contributes to discussions around human-centred healthcare innovation and responsible implementation by showing that successful innovation depends not only on technology itself, but also on workflow integration, organizational support and active involvement of healthcare professionals throughout the process.
Partners & ecosystem
NURTURE brings together researchers and healthcare professionals from Erasmus MC, TU Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam, combining expertise in nursing science, robotics, organizational science, psychology and interaction design. The program is closely connected to RoboHouse Delft and the FRAIM initiative, which support the program’s transdisciplinary innovation approach and collaboration between healthcare, robotics and design. NURTURE also collaborates closely with bedside nurses, nurse managers, innovation teams and hospital departments across Erasmus MC. Collaborations include initiatives such as Create4Care, Tech2Care, the Quality & Patient Care department and the Verpleegkundige Adviesraad (VAR).
Education & talent development
Students, researchers and interdisciplinary teams are actively involved in NURTURE through workshops, design assignments, prototyping exercises and research projects connected to real clinical challenges. The program contributes to interdisciplinary learning at the intersection of healthcare, technology, implementation and design. Recent activities included student prototyping projects at TU Delft focused on practical nursing challenges such as searching and fetching materials.
Looking ahead
In the coming years, NURTURE aims to further strengthen its practice-driven innovation approach by expanding collaborations, deepening implementation activities and continuing to develop concrete solutions together with nurses and healthcare professionals.
Future work includes further exploration of digital support systems, smarter logistics, workflow optimisation, robotics and technologies that may help reduce workload and improve job satisfaction in healthcare practice. Several innovations will be further tested and evaluated in real-world hospital practice.
It could help to look at what the biggest time-wasting tasks are... and those may not even be nursing-related.
