Barbara Wadsworth, DNP, RN, executive vice president and COO of Radnor Township, Pa.-based Main Line Health, never set out to be an entrepreneur — but she recently made her mark in the space.
On July 1, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent for a device she invented to prevent injuries from falls in medical facilities. The device is being developed by Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, part of Main Line Health, and its partner, Lankenau Ventures, and the patent is licensed to Lankenau Ventures, a joint venture between LIMR, Early Charm Ventures and L2C Partners.
“I never thought I would be an inventor, and I never thought I would have a patent,” said Dr. Wadsworth, who has nearly 40 years of healthcare and nursing experience, serving as senior vice president and chief nursing officer at Main Line Health before assuming her current role in 2020. “I don’t see myself as very entrepreneurial, but here I am.”
Dr. Wadsworth’s journey to lead inventor began in 2019 when she was approached by LIMR about whether nurses at the system may have ideas for inventions to help patients.
She told Becker’s preventing patient falls immediately came to her mind. A study published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and cited by Main Line Health shows nearly 1 million patients experience falls annually, leading to more than 250,000 injuries and approximately 11,000 deaths. Many of these falls occur in the bathroom.
“We talked about this device that would be in front of a patient, and it would be a motion sensor, and so if the patient stood up, they would still fall, but they won’t get injured,” said Dr. Wadsworth. “And why is that important? Well, that’s important because in the bathroom — depending on how big or small it is — there are a lot of hard surfaces, and there’s not a lot of space. And so people stand up and fall and hit their head on the floor or the sink or the wall, and they can get a head injury or a traumatic brain injury. And I’ve very sadly had patients die from a head injury. And I hate having that conversation with the family.”
These initial conversations led to her meeting with engineers multiple times and, ultimately, her role as lead inventor for the portable airbag/cushion-deployment device with a sensor that would detect a patient falling. According to Main Line Health, it would deploy a protective device suitable for adequate protection in bathrooms, and in nursing homes and private residences.
“Here we are in 2025, and I received my patent in the mail, which is super cool,” Dr. Wadsworth said. “And it has different drafts from the engineers of the different types of prototypes that we will hopefully have to try out in the hospital.”
She said her ultimate aim is patient safety.
“The absolute biggest success would be that they wouldn’t get hurt,” said Dr. Wadsworth. “And this could be used in a hospital, it could be used in assisted living, it could be used in long-term care — there’s a lot of use cases. And all of those locations have falls. And I have talked to many people where someone has died from a fall or someone has experienced a broken hip or broken ribs, or it’s complicated their recovery because they fell.
“And, with older people — they may have lived independently prior to their heart attack. But they’re 85 years old, they had a heart attack, then it begins this cascade of failing. And so if you could prevent something that will speed up their decline — you want to do that.”
Dr. Wadsworth’s invention isn’t the only one to come from Main Line Health. For example, Colleen Rogers, RN, at Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital in Malvern Pa., is lead inventor of a limb-support device, which is already being used to facilitate wound care. LIMR’s portfolio also includes another device targeting hospital fall injuries called the Essex Privacy Screen, being developed to address privacy loss.
She noted that all devices have their own timelines, and the next step for hers is identifying investors — “because we’re going to now have to create the prototype. And because it’s a little complicated and there’s an airbag that has to be recharged, it’s not the most inexpensive prototype to create. And so that’s what we’re looking for — is investors to help us to bring the device forward in its format, where we can start to test it.”
