Anna Young

Anna Young is the CEO and Co-Founder of MakerHealth, an organization dedicated to integrating the Maker Movement into healthcare. Her foundational belief is that individuals, including both patients and medical staff, possess the capacity to develop healing devices when provided with the necessary tools and encouragement. Her professional experience includes establishing makerspaces within hospitals, providing clinicians and patients access to prototyping technologies such as 3D printers and laser cutters. This initiative aims to improve the problem-solving abilities of those directly involved in patient care, enabling them to create customized and cost-effective solutions more efficiently than traditional development cycles.

Prior to her work with MakerHealth, Young was a researcher at MIT’s Little Devices Lab and a lecturer in the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. She is also a Co-Founder of MakerNurse, a program supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) designed to identify and support inventive nurses on the front lines of healthcare. Her global experience in this field includes the development of MEDIKit, a health prototyping tool kit. Young’s contributions to medical innovation have been recognized broadly. In 2015, LinkedIn named her a ‘Top Health Innovator Under 35,’ and in 2016, Fast Company recognized her as one of the ‘Most Creative People in Business.’ She continues to advocate for empowering medical personnel to become inventors through various speaking engagements.

Her work is centered on bringing tools of innovation and prototyping directly to the point of care within hospitals in locations such as Virginia, Texas, and Massachusetts. This strategy allows nurses, doctors, and patients to develop and refine medical device ideas. Young envisions a future where individuals customize their own medical solutions, such as pill bottles with adherence monitoring systems or custom-designed arm braces at a craft store with a physical therapist. MakerHealth also encourages sharing these innovations globally through selfie stations in makerspaces, fostering a collaborative environment for medical advancements and moving away from traditionally constrained device design.