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The Center For Health Design; Taggart ”Tagg” Neal, EDAC, Founder and CEO TAGCarts – Member Spotlight
February 17, 2022 – Concord, CA – USA
The Center For Health Design; Taggart ”Tagg” Neal, EDAC, Founder and CEO TAGCarts – Member Spotlight
The Center For Health Design’s® Lynn Kinney, EDAC, SASHE recently interviewed TAGCarts Founder and CEO Taggart Neal, EDAC for the Affiliate Connection’s “News and Highlights” 30k+ readers.
Full site Reader View available HERE.
…This month, we had the pleasure of interviewing Taggart “Tagg” Neal, EDAC, of TAGCarts. Tagg is literally thinking outside the box with his innovative and time-saving solutions for caregivers.
Briefly describe your current role.
As founder and CEO of TAGCarts, I oversee strategy, operations, culture, execution, finance, investor relations, sales and business development. Everything I do falls within the discipline of building a brand of products with nurses and hospitals. Our brand reflects their values, culture, and goals for better community health.
How long have you been affiliated with The Center?
5 years.
What led you to become a member?
The Center’s member community represents other like-minded teams embracing evidence-based design (EBD) in the healthcare industry. As a startup, I wanted our membership and contributions to the greater collective to be a cornerstone of our company culture. The team at The Center supported my vision for a cart company beyond expectations and hasn’t stopped since.
How did you get started in the industry?
In 2003, I was fortunate to be offered a position with a medical cart company as a territory manager for Northern California and Nevada. I fell in love with the role of serving nurses by providing medical cart solutions to enhance their ability to work smarter, safer, and provide better care for patients.
How have you utilized EBD and your EDAC credential to build a better cart and how has that impacted outcomes?
The evidence-based design process provided the framework for designing our supply cart for nurses – known as the TAGCart. It validates our design as going way beyond. We sought challenges and feedback from users to improve and inform design. My evidence-based design credential (EDAC) gave me the knowledge to apply the EBD process to our medical cart design. Including stakeholders requires input from more than just end-users. One outcome of that was the evidence we found where hospitals and healthcare systems are trending toward the integration of their sustainability goals into their supply chain. This validated our desire to build a sustainable cart for healthcare and was thus included. Had we only asked end user nurses about sustainability, we would not have known hospitals were looking for capital equipment to evolve beyond being competitive to becoming beacons of sustainability.
What have you liked most about being part of The Center for Health Design community?
Collaborating with other design-minded professionals. It’s comforting and validating to know others view objects, products, or environments of care beyond the “surface” of what they actually are. It’s design-mind thinking and there are no right answers, only models for processing. Eliminating binary outcomes encourages my ability to explore, suppose, imagine, and on occasion innovate.
What is your “go-to” resource from The Center?
The Knowledge Repository. It’s a dynamic treasure trove of case studies, white papers, and overall evidence-based design work for healthcare.
What is one of your greatest professional accomplishments?
(more…)
Editorial by Taggart F. Neal, CEO / Founder of TAGCarts, Inc.
September 17, 2021 – Sacramento, CA USA
TAGCarts, Inc. salutes and congratulates the 1st US Carbon Neutral Health System!(1.) It is increasingly clear healthcare has embraced corporate sustainability. With goals dating back five to ten years, we now find ourselves on the eve of twenty twenty-two, and in the initial manifestation of their economical, social, and environmental goal achievements. As a whole, these healthcare system values’ are now driving corporate decision making, supply chain partners, and spend commitments.
Consumerism in Healthcare
As a share of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.7 percent (2.). As the nation’s largest employer(3.), healthcare employs one in eight of us accounting for 12.5% (4.), and is expected to grow an additional 14% by 2028 due to the aging population (5.). This means healthcare isn’t an industry island of isolation, but rather consumers are healthcare and healthcare systems are consumers. This readily explains the rapid insurgence of consumerism into all facets of healthcare. Trends in consumer market = trends in healthcare. Accordingly a large percentage of those of us who work in healthcare, are the same consumers of healthcare. Today’s informed consumer is today’s informed patient as well as today’s healthcare worker. This is the driving force of compounding sustainability in healthcare and consumers will patronize healthcare systems who operate with forward thinking values that reflect their own.
Sustainability Phased Integration
With healthcare systems sustainability priority goals targeting greatest impact within their control, operational efficiencies, design, the built environment, and green energy consumption represent their first and second stage adoption of sustainable healthcare. These phases required dedicating their own resources toward new and innovative systems of operation and use; through their own capital and with applied grants and government / organizational rebates. The secondary and tertiary phases of adoption to sustainability, will actually cost healthcare far less capital and resources as they place the burden of “Shift” on their supply chain partners.
Product Differentiation
In the scope of hospital capital equipment, “Hospital Grade”, use to represent proven efficacy, durability, and ever lasting utility. Today, in light of current and past global pandemics (COVID-19, Ebola, etc.), informed patients (consumers) understand more than ever the link between their health and the health of their community and planet.
Has the casual “Consumer Grade” standard evolved beyond “Hospital Grade” for capital medical equipment? Perhaps when it comes to to the sustainability component of the products, yes…temporarily. However the evolved procurement processes and policies enable healthcare’s supply chain to slingshot past the consumer market where “Hospital Grade” represents sustainable production, manufacturing, and supply chain for approved vendors and diversified suppliers.
“TAGCarts has set the bar for sustainability in the medical cart and workstation capital equipment segment. Our products clinically solve for nurse safety, efficiency and work-flow optimization. Our company, partnerships, and brand reflects those values of forward thinking healthcare systems; constantly improving and measuring our impact. It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s smart business.”
– Taggart F. Neal, CEO / Founder TAGCarts, inc.
Vendor Differentiation
For the last few decades, being a diversified supplier to healthcare was enough to shine and win committed spend; Veteran-Owned, Woman-Owned, Minority-Owned, Small Business, and more. In the last ten years we have seen that grow into the suppliers who have policies of “Corporate Good” and policies of giving back. Examples are performing charity on weekends, highway clean-ups, adopting a less fortunate hospital across the globe, and more. The real evolution is taking place now. Environmental Preferred Purchasing and Sustainable Procurement policies are the new normal…
- What are your products made of?
- Where are they made?
- Who makes them?
- Is there a carbon footprint score or certification available?
- How is your company promoting wellness and good outside of your primary revenue core competencies?
Consumers – nurses, procurement, administration, staff, c-suite, management – are smart and informed. They peel back the layers of the marketing with a click on their phones or mouse – to fact check if the spirit of the marketing and positioning message are consistent with their products and actions.
Wherever healthcare supplier / vendor companies lie on the sustainability spectrum, being true and authentic to your commitments, goals and impact will deliver the highest rewards.
For Your Medical Cart Solutions,
Tagg
TAGCarts – Powered by Design, Designed for Care.
To see TAGCarts features and benefits for nurses and healthcare professionals please click here and review our “Suitable Medical Cart Applications.” To learn more about TAGCarts’ core sustainability commitments please click here. For questions about this article, share your next project, schedule a demo or contact us please click here.
Site References:
3. https://www.exploremedicalcareers.com/1-in-8-americans-employed-by-u-s-healthcare-industry/
4. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/10/health-care-still-largest-united-states-employer.html
5. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/home.htm
August 20, 2021 – Sacramento, CA USA
TAGCarts is pleased to officially welcome Dr. Karen K. Giuliano, PhD, RN, FAAN, MBA, to the TAGCarts Board of Advisors.
Karen brings over 25 years of experience in critical care nursing, medical product innovation and clinical outcomes research. Karen has made numerous contributions to the literature, with over 80 publications in more than 20 different journals and is also a frequent presenter. While her knowledge is in general acute and critical care, Karen’s specific interests are focused on the intersection of clinical needs and medical technology use, development and innovation.
In mid 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Registered Nurse, Karen K. Giuliano, was featured on the “Handoff” podcast by Trusted Health – For the Modern Nurse, as a nationally recognized nurse-innovator. TAGCarts reached out to Dr. Giuliano to appreciate her interview and share the work they were doing to elevate nursing with highly designed medical carts for healthcare.
Karen recognized the medical cart market as antiquated and ripe for disruption. Embracing TAGCarts’ vision and culture, Karen was attracted by how the company had made nurse input vital to their research and design process. In light of the CEO’s experience in medical carts for healthcare, Karen was impressed with the depth of end-user / nurse feedback TAGCarts integrated as part of the due diligence product development process. (TAGCarts and it’s partners conducted a multitude of interviews, performed in depth research, and hosted a three-day design charette with nurses in Berkeley, California in January 2020).
In the fall of 2020 TAGCarts engaged Karen’s consultancy firm, Pace-Setter & Associates, to perform clinical research and collect data around a potentially life saving medical cart innovation project. In addition Karen participated on the design team for their first generation supply / treatment / procedure medical cart.
“TAGCarts is committed to creating innovative products that include clinical end-users as a vital part of the product development process-that is why I am part of TAGCarts.”
– Karen K. Giuliano, pHd, rn, FaAN, MBA
Karen and CEO Taggart Neal met in Boston, Massachusetts in April of 2021 as her role soon progressed from consultant to Advisor.
“Karen’s experience and performance in critical care nursing, product innovation, and clinical research is nationally recognized in healthcare. She is a joy to work with and we are grateful to have her expertise on the team.”
– Taggart neal, Ceo tagcarts, inc.
Dr. Giuliano’s professional and educational background can be seen on her Advisor profile here.
June 14, 2021 – Sacramento, CA USA
TAGCarts, Inc. was recently awarded a Utility Patent from the United States Patent & Trademark Office, for their “Wall Anchor for Cart with Recharging.”
Patent No.: 10,927,873 – TAGCarts, Inc.
TAGCarts®’ intellectual property development is a key focus of it’s growth strategy. On February 23, 2021 the USPTO awarded the Delaware corporation’s first utility patent relating to medical and workstation carts. You can readily view on Google Patents here, “Wall Anchor for Cart with Recharging.”
Background of Invention:
In TAGCarts’ mission to solve for nursing with evolved medical cart and workstation solutions, an undeniable pain point emerged as omnipresent.
Problem: Clinically and professionally trained Nurses monitoring, managing, and maintaining mobile medical cart power systems. Initially chords, plugs and outlets plagued hospital and healthcare nursing. In order to keep medical carts and workstations powered, nurses are required to monitor power levels, manage chords, outlets and plugs, and maintain populations of powered carts for use while others may be charging. A slight improvement came with “Swappable” batteries. Now, with banks of batteries charging at centralized stations in a department, nurses were no longer having to plug, unplug and manage chords, outlets and plugs. However, they still require monitoring, managing and maintaining these floating battery cartridges, into the carts, into the chargers, and round and round. This added unnecessary nurse ambulation, and traded one physical and cognitive task for another. While solving for chords and plugs, and to some extent nurses bending up and down with chords, now they are carrying loaf of bread sized batteries to and fro. Additionally, now the PAR levels of batteries available, must be maintained, purchased, and refreshed to require the power modules for the carts. Unfortunately a huge majority of carts and workstations still use the less expensive chord / plug / outlet versions, and the newer “Swappable Batteries” still fall short of actually solving for eliminating this non patient centered task from nursing workflow.
Solution: The TAGCarts’ Patented design is an ecosystem whereby omnipresent and existing items in the nurses’ environment of care, are smart, charging carts at all times as needed. Thus completely eliminating the physical, mental, and cognitive task nurses currently have with mobile power systems – and more importantly freeing them up to do more dignified, important, and patient outcome centered tasks.
The winners of the concept design?: Nurses, Patients, Staff, and hospitals.
Currently named the “Power-Anchor Smart Rail™”, the product has successfully completed the “Proof of Concept” phase and entered the “Prototype” phase. The company’s evidence-based design methodology directs toward usability studies and select hospital pilots next. In addition to smart charging, the Power-Anchor Smart Rail also embodies features for seismically anchoring, cart-top / workstation surface wireless charging (handhelds, laptops, & tablets), general “Docking” (physical or virtual), and data transmission for medical carts and workstations.
TAGCarts® has benefited from a plethora of nursing professionals who continue to encourage, support, and participate in their research and development of medical cart solutions for healthcare. Together – they are committed to medical cart design and manufacturing that enables and elevates the nursing community, rather than add remedial tasks with no patient benefit.
About TAGCarts, Inc.
TAGCarts® is a Veteran Owned, California Founder Institute company bringing the medical cart industry into the 21st century with conscientious design and material manufacturing for nurses in healthcare. Based in Sacramento, TAGCarts® mission driven values’ of social responsibility and sustainability in healthcare was honored as Comstock’s Magazine’s “Startup of the Month” and founded by CEO Taggart F. Neal in 2019.
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