Nurse’s business idea wins Stanislaus Innovation Challenge

Charlene Solomon won the Stanislaus Innovation Challenge with an invention that could prevent injuries to nurses and bedridden patients.

Her business plan – a pad used in turning and changing incontinent patients without nurses having to hold them up – impressed an expert panel and audience voters Thursday night.

Solomon, a nurse and Oakdale resident, received $3,500 in cash. Runner-up Erin Bell of Modesto won $1,500 for her ceramic pendants that diffuse aromatherapy oils. They will share about $3,000 in legal, accounting, graphics and marketing services that could help their businesses thrive.

The second annual contest is sponsored by the Stanislaus Business Alliance, Wells Fargo, The Modesto Bee and the Stanislaus-Merced Angels investment group.

Thursday’s event at the Kirk Lindsey Center in Modesto involved five finalists from regional rounds this fall. Each of them started with a five-minute pitch, followed by questions from judges about their market research, financing, ramp-up strategy and other topics.

Advancing to the next stage were Solomon, Bell and Nathan Bunney of Modesto, who entered an online system that helps personal trainers keep track of gym members’ progress. They endured 30-second rounds of questioning by the panel, which then voted along with the audience for the winner and runner-up.

Solomon said in her pitch that the disposable pad can prevent bedsores for patients as well as injuries for her fellow nurses.

“The average nurse lifts 1.8 tons per shift, (and) 71,000 nurses are injured a year turning and changing a patient,” she said.

Solomon has a deal to sell 500,000 of the pads to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. They cost about $3 apiece to make under the agency’s mandate for U.S.-made goods. They are produced now by Domtar, based in North Carolina, but the inventor hopes that changes in the future.

“I want to bring it back to Modesto so we can manufacture it here and hire 3,000 people,” she said.

Bell said she hopes to employ 30 people soon in making her pendants, which are custom-designed and fired in a kiln. She said they are more portable than the electric diffusers now in use.

“You wear it as a necklace, and the cool thing about ceramic is that it’s naturally porous,” she said.

The other finalists were Seana Day Hull of Patterson with a digital device that analyzes crop health data gathered by drones and other means, and Michael Boyer of Turlock with comic books and animated cartoons in print and online.

The judges were Oscar Cabello, a district manager at Wells Fargo; Jay Pink, an attorney with Gianelli & Associates; David Darmstandler, co-founder and CEO of Datapath; Bee Editor Joe Kieta; and Lorinda Forrest, small-business deputy sector navigator for the California Community Colleges Economic and Workforce Development Program.

Solomon and Bell were automatically entered in next year’s San Joaquin Entrepreneur Challenge, an eight-county event based in Stockton. Bell was a finalist there with her pendants this year.

The Stanislaus County event will return for a third run in 2016.

This story was originally published December 10, 2015 at 9:04 PM with the headline "Nurse’s business idea wins Stanislaus Innovation Challenge."