Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

I think that's honestly like my biggest takeaway from my four years at Penn Nursing is just the importance of going and asking for help and asking others how did you do it and what advice would you have for innovation and entrepreneurship? Which is a beast.

Angelarosa DiDonato:
Hello everyone. I'm Angelarosa DiDonato.

Marion Leary:
And I'm Marion Leary.

Angelarosa DiDonato:

And you're listening to Amplify Nursing, a Penn Nursing podcast supported by the Pinola Fund for Innovation in Nursing.

Marion Leary:
Amplify Nursing features nurses who are leading the way in science, policy, and innovation.

Angelarosa DiDonato:
Our guests defy stereotypes, define practice, and disrupt convention.

Marion Leary:

We highlight the breadth and depth of nursing influence on society by amplifying nurses who are pushing boundaries and breaking down barriers to build a new paradigm.

Speaker 4:

Today on Amplify Nursing, we talk with Anthony Scarpone-Lambert, co-founder and CEO of Lumify Care. As an undergrad at Penn Nursing, Anthony was intrigued to the idea of attending a nurse hackathon. He embraced the challenge, pitched an idea to the group, and even met his co-founder. Today we talked to Anthony about his transformative experience, the benefits of working with a design thinking model of innovation, and his journey from nursing student to CEO.

Marion Leary:

All right, so Anthony, welcome to the Amplify Nursing podcast. I am super excited to be talking with you today.

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan of the Amplify Nursing podcast. I'm very happy to be here.

Marion Leary:

So for a little background, Anthony and I have worked together at the University of Pennsylvania school of nursing. He was a student there and actually took my innovation health foundations of design thinking course. And we've also done some hackathons together and some other innovation projects. So

I'm really excited to talk with you and have you share your experience around why nursing innovation is so important for nursing students and the path that it has taken you on so far, because it is really extraordinary. So I'm really looking forward to our listeners learning your story if they don't know it already.

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

Thank you. And I have to say, your class was my favorite that I've ever taken at Penn. It was so exciting to really dive into design thinking and learn about it intentionally. So if you are a Penn nursing student, you must take that class.

Marion Leary:

Well, I wasn't fishing for a compliment, but thank you. That was very nice of you to say. So I want to start out first though, you had a really interesting background before you got into nursing. So can you tell us a little bit about what you did prior to going to nursing school and talk a little bit about how that lens has led you to where you are today also.

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

For sure. Yeah. My background is very surprising to people, I guess when they hear it. I actually grew up as a professional actor. So I was on Broadway in two shows growing up as a young child. So from the age of nine to 14, I was working professionally in New York City doing the whole kind of Broadway experience. And I think it definitely made me who I am today in a lot of ways, just being such a young person, working in a professional environment, and dealing with rejection from auditions and having to really put yourself out there and be able to improvise in front of 2000 audience members when there was a technical difficulty on stage or when something wasn't going how it was supposed to go. So I think just being in that environment at a young age, one, I think made me grow up a lot faster, but two, I think it kind of equipped me with a lot of skills that I've used throughout my nursing career so far, especially in the nursing innovation space where you're constantly pitching and dealing with different adversities.

So yeah, we did professional theater for a while and then the transition to nursing happened in a couple of ways. Really through just, I think, my love for helping others and wanting to maybe put on a show, not necessarily on stage, but in a patient's room when your patient needs something, and you kind of have to have that empathy that I really learned throughout my career in theater.

Marion Leary:
So what made you leave theater and pursue nursing?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

So leaving theater, it was pretty cut and dry. I had just gotten too old to play the parts that I was playing on Broadway. I was playing child parts and characters. And then once I got too old to play those parts, my career as a child actor pretty much came to a close and all of the friends that I'd made throughout my time being a child actor, a lot of them did stay in theater and pursued musical theater, or singing, or music or whatever they were passionate about. But I think for me, I always knew that theater would be like a part of me and I could always do it in the future, but I didn't really see it being my long term career.

I really wanted to learn. I wanted to go to regular school. Throughout my time on Broadway, I was homeschooled and doing online school. So I really just kind of wanted to learn. And I always was

passionate about science and healthcare and the human body. So I thought maybe I should go into medicine or some sort of science field, and to kind of go that route. It just made more sense to take a step back from my theater career and go back to regular school and start studying and learning, because for a while it was just being a full-time actor, honestly.

And then once I had started going back to regular high school, I had actually been volunteering at a cancer support group in my area. And there I saw nurses and I was really fascinated by how the nurses were really the ones running the show, especially in the community. They were leading the cancer support group. They were, I think, caring for people in a very holistic way, not just treating a specific disease or illness, but rather treating the whole person. And I was really intrigued by that impact and the intimacy that the nurse was having with this group and that ultimately opened my eyes to the role of nurses and really how versatile it is.

I'm definitely someone who likes a lot of things, I would say. My passions are kind of all over the place. And I felt that what I was really intrigued about nursing for is just how many things nurses can do. Nurses can work in the community, they can work in law, they can work in research, they can work in tech, they can obviously work at a hospital. So I think just that versatility of pathways was really intriguing to me and that ultimately led me to nursing.

Marion Leary:

So it's interesting that you say that, because I know a lot of people just think about nurses as clinicians at the bedside. How did you come to realize that nursing was such a versatile profession?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

That's a good question. I honestly think it was the nurses a part of this cancer support group, and the fact that they were doing a little bit of everything. I think just seeing them care for patients in a way that wasn't direct on a patient's bed at a hospital, I think made me really realize, wow, nurses can do so many things. It's such a versatile profession. And then when I looked into it more, just a quick Google search, I quickly saw that there's a bunch of different roles that nurses are a part of. There's nurses in Congress. I had seen nurse founders start companies like NurseGrid. So I think it was a combination of, one, seeing it actually firsthand in my community. And then second was, kind of reaching out and looking for folks to look up to. And surprisingly, I think for me, it was easy to find those folks because nurses are just in every facet of our society.

Marion Leary:

So very true. So talk a little bit about then your undergrad nursing career,.you were involved in a lot of innovation projects that you spearheaded. How did you start your path down the innovation space?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

I feel like kind of setting back from my career on Broadway, I always just had like a very entrepreneurial spirit. When you're performing on Broadway, you really are selling yourself every day. When you go into an audition, you have to sell yourself, you're giving your resume and your headshot, and you're really like presenting yourself and kind of selling yourself in a way. And I think that definitely instilled this entrepreneurial drive that if I kind of set a goal for myself and worked really hard, I could get through the adversities and kind of stay gritty and maintain that growth mindset. All of which I think is really crucial for an entrepreneurial spirit.

So going into Penn, I kind of knew that I was interested in innovation and entrepreneurship. I didn't quite expect, I think, to get so wrapped up into it and throughout my college experience, but certainly at Penn and Penn Nursing specifically, it's really just so supported and encouraged that I think just seeing all the opportunities at Penn Nursing really excited me to want to participate.

And my journey, particularly at Penn and in college, within entrepreneurship and innovation really just stemmed from an incredible friend I had, who was already kind of tapped into the space. She was studying business and she was actually working on another health tech startup at the time. And we were talking one day and basically both shared similar backgrounds working with underrepresented communities. And we talked about emergency services, and accessibility, and kind of got into this conversation around how people contact emergency services when they need it and how it's not a super accessible service surprisingly, if there's an emergency. You would think it should be really easy to be able to contact police or an ambulance or whatever it is that you need. But for many communities, like the deaf community, victims of domestic violence, folks who are in a school shooting, or a situation where it's unsafe speak, calling 911, which is the traditional route of calling an emergency service is not always a feasible option.

So we kind of started talking about this and that ultimately led us to start a nonprofit. And that was during the end of my first year in nursing school. So really it was through a friend and just having this conversation around something we were both passionate about that kind of introduced me into the world of entrepreneurship and innovation. And before I knew it, I was participating in different accelerators and startup competitions, and it really just opened my eyes to, wow, there are so of resources and things to take advantage of here. I really want to try to maximize during my four years in nursing school and see what I can build during this time of freedom beyond your very busy clinical schedule.

Marion Leary:

So you talked a little bit about, in the beginning, the innovation health class that you were a part of. Can you talk more about what the formal education around innovation was during your undergrad program? Because I know you were part of the Hillman Scholars Program also.

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

Innovation was really in every facet of my collegiate experience. From the classes I was taking to the academic program I was in, which is the Hillman Scholars Program in Nursing Innovation, to all of the extracurriculars I was a part of, from the on-campus accelerator, the different funds that were on campus that you could get some grant funding. So I honestly think that it was kind of a little bit of everything from every aspect of my experience at Penn Nursing. I was kind of getting exposed to different skills and different perspectives, especially because it's such an interdisciplinary campus. Obviously I was housed in the nursing school, but a lot of my friends and people I was working on projects with, were in the business school or in the engineering school. So it really kind of allowed me to learn a lot of different perspectives and a lot of different languages for how people spoke, because engineers speak differently than maybe a business student compared to how I would perceive or communicate something as a nursing student. So I think for that reason, it was just super helpful to be immersed in such a diverse community of folks interested in innovation and entrepreneurship.

But yes, I did take your design thinking class, which was super helpful to learn a really important framework for how to solve problems with an end user perspective. I did an on campus accelerator at Penn called VIP-X, which was truly incredible to just learn how to launch a product, how to create a go- to-market strategy, and how to get something out there into the world. Sometimes that's very scary and hard to do at first. So they guided us through that with some incredible resources.

The Hillman Scholars Program in Nursing Innovation was obviously just a champion of nursing students going after their innovative ideas. And they did that through various ways, whether it was speaker events, whether it was connecting you with previous students who had been a part of the program, funding for you to work on your projects during the summer, et cetera. And then yeah, just the student body and all the faculty at Penn. Really just tried to tap into learning as much from the people, a part of the Penn ecosystem, and I think that's honestly like my biggest takeaway from my four years at Penn Nursing is just the importance of going and asking for help and asking others, how did you do it and what advice would you have for innovation and entrepreneurship? Which is a beast.

Marion Leary:

So there's the traditional learning that you talked about, but there's also active learning activities, which you mentioned that some of them, but I'd love for you to talk about your experience at the SONSIEL Johnson & Johnson Nurse Hackathon, because I think that's really what has propelled you and your company forward. So can you talk a little bit about, one, what a hackathon is, and then two, what your experience was at the hackathon, what you pitched and what you're now creating?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

Yes. I love this loaded question. I could probably talk for 24 hours about this exact question, because I'm just so passionate about giving nurses and nursing students the tools that they need to go after their ideas, because throughout my entire experience building Lumify we're constantly talking with nurses, and nursing students, and respiratory therapists, and physicians, and healthcare workers across the board. And I mean, it's truly amazing the solutions that folks are thinking about as they're working clinically and are often creating in a DIY kind of MVP fashion.

So really what hackathons are, is I think just an opportunity to, one, provide a space for healthcare workers to feel like they can come forward with their ideas and get feedback, and iterate and communicate with other like-minded colleagues. Two, it provides you a place to access resources. I think the number one question I always get from fellow nurses and nursing students is, how do you start? That's the most ambiguous part of the entrepreneurship journey really, like, how do you start? How do you even create your first product? And I think hackathons really simplify that in this kind of lean startup design thinking model, which is like, rapid prototyping, creating something super scrappy and going out and asking for feedback, and then iterating from there and continuing that cycle. So I think the hackathons really provide you with those resources. Whether it's mentors, whether it's frameworks for how to approach things, being able to see what other people are working on and how they're approaching it. And then I think the third thing is really the network. I mean, I've met so many people from that first hackathon that I did in 2019. One of them was my co-founder that I started Lumify with, but many are partners of Lumify today and many are mentors of Lumify today.

So I think it's really incredible to have that hackathon space to really feel comfortable coming forward with your ideas and being able to get feedback and kind of see what other people are thinking about. Two, is really the resources that you get in this experience, although it's only maybe two days. You just get so many resources and it really opens your eyes and inspires you to be able to create something that can make an impact for millions of people. And then three, is really that networking piece and being able to meet other folks that are interested in innovation and entrepreneurship, and be able to work with them and collaborate with them.

So our story goes, I went to that hackathon, not really expecting anything, to be honest. I kind of went in with limited information. I just thought it was going to be super fun to be able to go to New Brunswick, New Jersey for the weekend, stay in a hotel, go to a conference, maybe meet some other are cool nurses and healthcare workers and innovators, but certainly did not expect for it to really be the seedling of building a company. And I think really putting me on a very different path than maybe I was before.

So, I went to that hackathon and was a part of a team that was kind of interested in looking at night shift nursing and how we can better improve night shift nursing experience, especially around being able to see, trying to decrease patient sleep disturbances, et cetera. And through that experience and meeting my co-founder, Jennifferre, we really got the seedlings for what our company has become, which is Lumify. And we started with a product that stemmed from our idea that we had created at the hackathon with a collaboration of nurses and different healthcare workers that we met there. And that product was basically a wearable light that helps nurses and healthcare workers illuminate their workspace with the end goal of decreasing patient disturbances.

So if you've ever worked night shift, or maybe even day shift, if you've cared for a resting patient, you would know you're sometimes tiptoeing into the patient room to provide care. And when you provide care, you have to see what you're doing. If you're hanging a medication, you want to be able to read the label and do your med checks. If you're assessing your patient, you obviously need to see their skin and what they look like. So that requires light. But when your patient is sleeping, sometimes you don't want to have to wake them up if it's not urgent, but really the only solution is turning on these bright overhead room lights that currently exist in hospitals and extremely disruptive places, they're not the best place to heal. And I think the fact that we have these bright overhead room lights that are waking up patients throughout the night is a great example of that.

So with our wearable light, it basically allows healthcare workers to be able to provide their care without needing to turn on those bright, overhead intrusive room lights so that they can provide care to their patient without disturbing them. So definitely a very simple innovation, but I think one that has been so impactful and really allowed us to start somewhere, get a product out to market, build a pretty large customer base, learn how to sell to nurses, learn how to sell to hospitals, which was like a crazy learning experience. And then from there, we've grown Lumify into a much bigger vision, which has been really exciting to kind of grow from this first product and getting something out there to start, building up that initial traction, having a sustainable revenue stream, and then from there being able to make an even bigger impact.

And now what Lumify is today, is we're building the world's first super app for healthcare workers. So we've unified everything a healthcare worker needs like their gear, like Lumify's uNight Light product, but also things like wellness, and community, and continuing education, and credentialing, and professional organizations all into one app, one digital hub for healthcare workers. And really this idea stemmed from our experience launching our first product, the uNight Light, that stemmed from our hackathon experience. We were selling this product direct to consumers. Mostly nurses were buying it just from our website and we were trying to find more distribution channels to sell this product, but we really were noticing that there isn't a central place to reach nurses and healthcare workers that's trusted and vetted.

And secondly, healthcare workers need a lot of gear and we spend a lot of money on out-of- pocket expenses for our professional gear and resources, but our profession is extremely disjointed and overwhelming, which really leads to an underutilization of resources and tools by healthcare workers, which then leads to burnout and all of the additional challenges that we're facing in healthcare.

So we chatted with 500 healthcare workers over the summer. We kind of used the design thinking model, which of course I learned at Penn Nursing with you, but I also was able to refine at the hackathon experience. And then from there, we were able to find our solution, which was creating this digital hub, started with an MVP, built traction from there, build traction. I kept iterating, kept talking with our users, and then we just recently launched our first app.

So it's been a journey, to say the least, a rollercoaster. But definitely being able to have met my co-founder at that hackathon and really knowing that we were both super passionate about building for healthcare workers and leading and championing nurse led innovation. I think it was just super special to be able to connect there and be able to build this company together.

Marion Leary:

Yeah. It's so exciting where you started and where you're at now. I mean, I remember watching you pitch at the hackathon and obviously your Broadway background really played a big part. I can remember it was just an incredible pitch. You turned the lights out, you turned them on, you had this incredible presence on stage, which obviously goes back to your days in Broadway.

So I'm wondering, you mentioned that this put you on a path in nursing that you hadn't even planned for. I know that you were the first nursing student at Penn to win the President's Innovation Prize. And so, you're now working on Lumify full-time for the next couple years. Can you talk about what you think your path is going to be moving forward in the profession?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

Yeah, I feel like I haven't even had time to really think that through because everything has just been so incredibly chaotic in the best way possible with Lumify. I think the healthcare workforce is so underserved when it comes to innovation and tools and resources to support us. So the traction that we've been able to achieve with Lumify so quickly has just been really thrilling, but has kept me very busy that reflecting on even beyond the Lumify future, which I definitely think will be a long road forward and kind of getting to this large vision and mission that we have.

I honestly think staying in the nursing innovation space will always be the home that I want for my career. I think that it's just such a fulfilling experience to see something go from zero to one and be able to have this idea that maybe it could work, maybe it could not, and be able to launch something and see people use it and get feedback, and iterate, and then launch something again. And that whole process is just, it's so fulfilling and thrilling. Definitely very hard and stressful and draining, but truly it's just the most incredible feeling to be able to see someone use your product and find value in it. So, yeah, I think for the rest of my career, I see myself just continuing to build tools and resources to support the healthcare workforce. I think that maybe someday it would be so cool to be able to fund nurse -ed ventures or be able to support more nurses entering the innovation and entrepreneurship space, because I really do believe that that's the future and the way that healthcare will improve. Moving forward is nurses coming forward with our ideas and our voices.

So I guess that's the future for me, but certainly Lumify has been just such an incredible journey. And we're really just full pedal on the gas to reach this big vision that we have.

Marion Leary:

For any nursing students or nurses who are listening to this as a final question, what are your tips to them if they have ideas and they want to start to move those forward or commercialize them?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

I have a couple of pieces of advice here. I think first is just start. I think sometimes that's the hardest part throughout the journey. Maybe you feel nervous or maybe you're second guessing yourself. Can I really do this? How do I start? Just start. Even if your first version of what you're building is really, really scrappy and you think it looks terrible, just go talk to users about it, see if anyone will buy it, see how people react to it. I think really starting is key, because if you don't start, you will not learn as much. And it'll slow your ability to build traction. So no matter where you are, I think just launching something and starting, and then going and talking with users and continuing that design thinking framework, I think is my number one piece of advice.

I think my second piece of advice is use your resources. There are so many free resources out there. I mean, literally all you have to do is go on Google and type in design thinking for health, or Y Combinator Startup School, and you can really learn how to approach building something that can impact others. So I think just reaching out for help, messaging people on LinkedIn, cold emailing people to have a call with them and learning about their journey. I think all of these things are just really important in using your resources.

And then, last thing I think my third piece of advice is to stay gritty and have a growth mindset. I can't share enough, fundraising a seed round as a nurse founder just coming out of nursing school was one of the hardest things I've done, because I constantly heard, oh, you're just a nurse. Or like, how are you going to build this big tech company. I've had constantly people tell us that we're doing something wrong or that we're not going to be able to do it or this, that, and the other thing. Everyone has an opinion.

I think that you just have to stay true to your mission and what it is that you want to build and what you're passionate about. Just stay gritty, keep a growth mindset, realize that you're not going to know everything, but you can always learn. And no matter what adversities you face, if you just stay gritty and focus on what your end goal is, I think that you can really get through anything. So those are my three pieces of advice, but beyond that, just have fun. Innovation entrepreneurship is really a fun experience and journey, and you learn so much, and it definitely can be very hard. It definitely can be stressful, but I think it's also really fulfilling and we need more nurses and nursing students entering this space. So just remember the value that you bring to these spaces and definitely don't let anyone ever tell you that you can't do it, because you definitely can.

Marion Leary:

That advice surely has worked well for you. So thank you for sharing those with our listeners. If folks want to find Lumify, how do they find you?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert:

Yes, please go to www.lumifycare.com. There you'll be able to find all the information about our app and our products that we sell. And then you can follow us on all social media channels @lumifycare.

Marion Leary:

Well, Anthony, thank you so much for talking with us today and really congratulations on all your success and hard work, and I can't wait to watch where things go in the future.

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: Thank you, Marion. And thank you so much for all of your support. It's so amazing to think that we're already in 2022. And I always just think back to 2019, us at Penn Nursing. So it's super exciting to see all the work you're doing and really just championing nurse-led innovation. It's super inspiring and I'm excited to see the world that all nurses are going after our ideas and feeling empowered to do so.

Angelarosa DiDonato: Hello, Marion.

Marion Leary:
Hello, Angela. How's it going?

Angelarosa DiDonato:

It's amazing. How are things with you? I was just listening to this amazing interview that you did with Anthony Scarpone-Lambert.

Marion Leary:

Yeah, he's incredible. He totally epitomizes the energy and excitement and innovative spirit that we're really trying to infuse into our nursing students here at Penn Nursing. I just loved listening to his story, where he came from, how he got to where he is now, and the work he's doing to lead his brand new company. It was just a really great conversation.

Angelarosa DiDonato:

Yeah. I think he has an amazing energy about him. I mean, I was hyped by the end of the interview, just thinking about all of the things that he's doing and wondering why I'm not doing more. So I just think he's an amazing example of what nurses can do when given opportunities considering he started with a hackathon that he showed up for that he wasn't really sure was going to be a thing. He just thought it was cool and he wanted to try it out.

Marion Leary:

Yeah. And this is, I think, the point that nursing programs and health systems need to understand. If we expose our nursing students and our nurses to innovation opportunities like hackathons, like accelerators, like different innovation challenges, they will learn and they will create, and they will flourish. And it is only better for our patients and the health system at large. And so, I think we really need to allow our nurses and nursing students these opportunities. That they are critical part of the learning environment for nurses.

Angelarosa DiDonato:

Amplify Nursing is hosted by Dr. Angelarosa DiDonato and Marion Leary, and produced by the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, with special thanks to Jonathan for his assistance. Music for the podcast was created by Harper Leary. The podcast is made possible by the Krista and Rich Pinola Fund for Innovation and Nursing.

Marion Leary:

Follow us on Twitter @pennnursing. Until next time, keep pushing over, under, around, and through. We want to thank you for listening to the Amplifying Nursing podcast and remind you to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you enjoy your podcast listening. And if you can do us a solid, please rate and review us as well. It will go a long way in amplifying our episodes.