Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

When Dr. Dan Niendorff is not flying planes he built or saving patients’ lives as a critical care physician, he’s probably working on his start-up that’s positioned to alleviate a decades-old issue in hospitals across the globe.

He calls it MindWave, and it’s a communications system that would drastically reduce the number of alarms, dings, and pings on a hospital floor daily.

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, one-third of all patients staying in the hospital, and 80 percent of patients in the intensive care unit (ICU), experience delirium. It’s a symptom of exhaustion through which a patient enters an altered state of consciousness, characterized by episodes of confusion that could last for hours or days.

Each device in the hospital has some sort of alarm system to get the nursing staff’s attention. It has to be loud enough to get the attention of someone in the other room.  For some perspective, there are thousands of devices in any given hospital, and hundreds in an intensive care unit (ICU) alone.

“For a patient coming in for the first time, it’s incredibly loud and annoying, but all of us that are around it all the time are so used to it that we get alarm fatigue,” Niendorff said.

For 10 years, The Joint Commission (TJC) has recognized alarm fatigue as a core issue for patient safety through the National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs). 

Niendorff has extensive experience in the hospital system. He worked in critical care at Covenant for a number of years and then transitioned to a practice at Ballad Health. Just a few weeks ago, he made the decision to step back and focus full-time on MindWave.

Understanding MindWave Technology

In his free time, Niendorff was building his own airplane. While working on some aircraft electronic safety measures, he noticed that the aircraft industry had similar struggles with alarm fatigue; however, the solutions seemed so much more clear in a different context.

“One of my partners, Peter McKeown, would say that it’s the people who wear two hats that come up with the ideas,” Niendorff said. 

Distributing audio

In the current system, the alarms function in a general audio distribution format, so everyone within range can hear. However, with MindWave technology, that alarm will be delivered through a silent pathway directly to the person responsible.

Niendorff believes bone conduction headsets are the right technology for the job. They allow staff to have full hearing capabilities and environmental awareness, while also receiving individual messaging. 

But it’s not that simple. 

Ensuring reliability

“It has to be 100 percent reliable. When people’s lives are on the line, you cannot have failure,” Niendorff said. “So, at MindWave, we added a set of sensors to the headsets to ensure that instructions are being sent to an occupied headset.”

Furthermore, if, after a certain period of time the person who is responsible does not accept the alarm on their headset, it will become a general alarm that others nearby can hear. Again, going back to Niendorff’s 100 percent reliable goal.

Assigning alarms to the person responsible

You can imagine that one of the complicated parts of this sort of technology is allocating which alarms go to whom. To solve that issue, MindWave plans to place a locating beacon in each room that can track the headset responsibility.

“We created a system that allows the devices to associate with a patient automatically through a redundant system where they recognize the room that they’re in and the patient they’re associated with,” Niendorff said.

So, if one nurse leaves the ICU to do a CT scan, their typical alarms would automatically be passed to another nurse who is still back in the ICU (in closer proximity to the patients).

“We are eliminating points of failure,” Niendorff said. “The beacon has to have a responsible person, and that responsible person has to be wearing their headset, and they have to accept it, and if not, a regular alarm will sound.”

Rolling out MindWave Pilots

MindWave landed a pilot beta test at a hospital system in India. They will be launching the pilot at the beginning of July, covering two ICUs with 20 beds each.

Niendorff said the goal of the pilot is to collect data and note improvements in alarm response times, sleep deprivation, nursing satisfaction, and nurse burnout.

Regarding MindWave’s integration into hospitals in the U.S., that may take a bit longer. The team is working with FDA consultants to help write a compelling application; however, it’s still a lengthy process.

A Qualified Team Aligned on a Mission

MindWave’s team has more degrees than one could count. Dr. Niendorff (President) is joined by his wife, Dr. Cindy Niendorff, as the Chief Marketing Officer, and his son, Otto Niendorff, who is currently a student of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 

Additional key members of the founding team include Dr. Chuck Mascioli as the Chief Financial Officer and Dr. Peter McKeown as the Chief Operating Officer. 

As the MindWave team looks forward to the milestones to bring MindWave to market, Niendorff said his whole team remains dedicated to solving this issue.

“We have heard the horror stories and the deep dissatisfaction with the alarm system in hospitals. People stop us all the time to share their experiences with the beeping, buzzing, and blaring, just praying it would stop,” Niendorff said. “We hear those stories, and they only fuel us to keep moving forward.”

You can listen to a sample of the MindWave technology on the company’s website.

Connect with Dr. Dan Niendorff.

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