The concept of the nurse+engineer recently has been promoted as an example of convergence research where new paradigms of problem solving emerge at the interface of two or more existing disciplines (Oerther & Glasgow, 2021). For example, in private hospitals with affluent patients, bedside collaboration might include tech-savvy engineers co-designing whiz-bang gizmos jointly with nurses who understand both the nuanced product preferences of the patient and the minimum product performance specifications demanded by a healthcare provider. These innovations might include hi-tech solutions such as a nickel-metal hydride battery-powered pressure sensor embedded in a silicone nipple on a polycarbonate feeding bottle to measure nutritive sucking of infants with data delivered via Bluetooth to a software application operating on a hand-held smart phone device with a 5G connection to a blockchain encrypted cloud server with a secondary data display embedded in the contact lens worn by a nurse (and yes, this example is intentionally elaborate).
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/daniel_oerther/139/