Jessica Queen on Worthy Connections

What happens when a healthcare professional gets tired of watching an overwhelmed system fail the people it is supposed to protect?

In this episode of Worthy Connections, Laura Lasher talks with nurse practitioner and entrepreneur Jessica Queen, creator of the Triage 360 system. After two decades working at the bedside, Jessica saw firsthand how too many patients, too few healthcare professionals and limited monitoring could allow a patient's changing condition to go unnoticed. Her answer is a wearable monitoring system designed to automatically triage patients and help healthcare providers quickly identify who needs attention most urgently.

Jessica shares the story behind the technology, how her team found an unexpected opportunity with the military, what she has learned about entrepreneurship and fundraising, and why decades spent making decisions in high-pressure healthcare environments may have prepared her surprisingly well for building a company.

Transcript Highlights

Laura Lasher: Tell us about yourself and what you're working on.

Jessica Queen: I'm a nurse practitioner, and I've spent 20 years at the bedside trying to manage the chaos. Anyone who's been to a hospital knows it's not fun to sit in an emergency room and feel like you've been left behind while everyone is busy doing other things.

As a nurse, unfortunately, we sometimes miss things because we're busy. There are too many sick patients and not enough hands. After seeing enough bad outcomes, I became very motivated to change that.

I saw where technology was going and thought, We can't keep doing this the same way.

That's why I created the Triage 360 system. It's a small wearable wireless monitor. It monitors patients and communicates with a dashboard providers can access. The system pushes the most critical patients to the top.

It's like our backup brain. It keeps track of who is deteriorating and where our attention needs to go next.

Laura: How did the military become interested in what you're developing?

Jessica: That was never really my intent. My background is on the civilian side — heart transplant, ER and other areas.

But I have an amazing 20-year Air Force veteran who is the head engineer on my team. His experience serving overseas helped guide our decision to approach the military. He had seen situations that could have benefited from a system like this.

We went through programs including Encountering Innovation and were selected for DARPA's Triage Challenge, which was a huge honor. Now I spend a lot of time traveling, demonstrating the equipment and talking with military organizations.

It was somewhat accidental, but I've learned that the people you surround yourself with can unlock doors you didn't even know were there.

Laura: What makes Triage 360 different?

Jessica: What really sets it apart is that it performs the triage automatically.

Today, we can still be using paper tags or even grease pens in mass-casualty situations. Our device can determine a person's priority within seconds.

We didn't invent a new triage methodology. We took existing algorithms and automated the process. The device measures non-invasive vital signs and also allows some basic documentation, such as whether a tourniquet has been placed, whether there is airway compromise or whether someone is non-ambulatory.

The device also has its own screen. That's important because you can shut it off from communications entirely and still see what's happening with the patient. A wireless monitor isn't particularly useful if losing the connection makes the device useless.

Laura: So it helps take your team to the patients with the highest risk?

Jessica: Exactly. I physically can't be everywhere at once.

On a medical-surgical unit, I might personally have six patients while the entire unit has around 20. I can leave this device behind with a patient and it can continue monitoring them. It helps tell me which patient is most critical and whose condition may be changing.

That's very different from our current ability to monitor people, especially in the field.

Laura: You're running a company, traveling and raising a family. How do you juggle everything?

Jessica: I think any healthcare provider with a family can tell you about juggling a million things.

Working in the ER prepared me tremendously. Things are always going wrong. In business, you have to pivot, make the best decision you can with the information you have and keep moving forward. That's true in business, and it's true in the ER.

I really think healthcare can produce great entrepreneurs because we're accustomed to doing whatever we can with whatever we have.

I'm also a mom with three great kids and an amazing husband. I travel quite a bit, and my husband's support at home is what allows me to do that.

Laura: You've also raised money for the company. What has that journey been like?

Jessica: I never thought I was going to be an entrepreneur, so all of this was completely foreign to me.

Fortunately, Nebraska has a great support system. We received a $150,000 Nebraska prototype grant to build our earliest models. Since then, we've raised a little over $1 million in angel funding.

That has allowed us to produce our first eight functional units.

We're still fundraising because manufacturing is expensive, especially when you're committed to U.S.-based manufacturing. But we're getting closer to the finish line.

Laura: What will it mean when you finally have those working units in your hands?

Jessica: The company really kicked off in June 2023. In the startup world, three years isn't necessarily a long time, but it feels like an eternity.

Being able to finally hold something that we've been dreaming about — something that we believe can make an impact and save lives — is going to be a great day.

Laura: What have you learned about entrepreneurship through all of this?

Jessica: It's certainly never something I imagined myself doing, but the more I get into it, the more I fall in love with entrepreneurship and the challenge.

It is hard. It's really hard.

But many of our investors are former military or people who have lived through the kinds of situations we're trying to address. They immediately understand the problem. I've had people come up to me, sometimes with tears in their eyes, and tell me that if something like this had existed, things might have been different for someone they knew.

That's been really powerful.