Nurse-led Startup Manufactures Wearable LED Light to Illuminate Workspaces Without Disturbing Patient Sleep

uNight Light was invented by nurses for their fellow frontline healthcare workers.

When nursing student Anthony Scarpone-Lambert worked the overnight shift during his clinical rotations, he disliked turning on a patient's overhead lights to check vitals or perform other care and disrupting their sleep.

In talking to other nursing friends and healthcare clinicians, Scarpone-Lambert realized they all shared a problem: Caring for patients in the middle of the night meant either waking them up every few hours with an overhead light or doing their job in the dark.

Scarpone-Lambert, a 2021 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, contemplated possible solutions with Jennifferre Mancillas, a California neonatal ICU nurse whom he had met at a nursing hackathon about two years earlier.

The pair, who shared a desire to see how technology could help solve problems they and other frontline workers encountered at work, created the uNight Light, a wearable LED light that illuminates workspaces, while decreasing patient sleep disturbances, especially at night.

"As nurses who worked during the pandemic, we frequently felt frustrated by the lack of tools and resources we had access to," said Scarpone-Lambert. "Many solutions address patients directly, but we understood how the value of supporting healthcare workers directly correlates to improving patient experience."

Scarpone-Lambert and Mancillas created a startup company, Lumify Care, to manufacture the uNight Light, as well as other solutions to empower healthcare workers with tools and resources to help them perform their jobs. Medline today announced it has partnered with Lumify Care as the exclusive distributor of the uNight Light, greatly expanding access to the tool.

"Hospitals are disruptive," Mancillas said. "They’re noisy with bright flashing lights in your face, even in the middle of the night, and when our patients can’t get the solid sleep they need, their healing process is delayed and patient satisfaction decreases."

"Just as important as improving the patient experience, healthcare employers now have an opportunity to provide a functional tool to help staff feel more supported in performing their duties with less fumbling and higher rates of efficiency," she said.

There's typically a disconnect between companies that manufacture products for healthcare professionals and the people who actually use them, Mancillas said, but the uNight Light was designed by frontline workers for frontline workers.

Their invention, for example, contains three lighting settings: the white light is dim, yet still effective for reading, preparing medications, inspecting lines, and for careful patient assessment; the red light increases alertness, preserves night vision, and can help signal colleagues when preparing medications to decrease distractions; and the blue light, the brightest setting, was designed to increase cognitive function to minimize human error.

"We know the value that uNight Light has brought to our own experience as frontline healthcare workers," said Scarpone-Lambert, "and we’ll continue to work toward every healthcare worker around the world having a uNight Light."