When Nurses Lift Up Nurses: The CareEffects Story
Through professional networks, innovation programming, and national recognition, ANA helped CareEffects gain visibility, validation, and momentum.
“I think for me, it just feels exciting that we are able to see things we've never seen before [...] I feel like someone who's explored part of the universe that's never been seen, you know.”
The Story of CareEffects
Ecoee Rooney, DNP, RN is the Chief Nursing Officer at Indicator Sciences. She has been a nurse since 1999, with a career in both nursing professional development and forensic nursing and a longstanding passion for healthy work environments.
CareEffects, a service of Indicator Sciences, is a leadership service that provides the objective, forward-looking intelligence healthcare leaders need to act proactively. They partner with health systems to translate complex data into confident decisions that foster a supportive, effective, and resilient nursing team.
As a transdisciplinary team constantly challenging each other, CareEffects has made the intangible strain experienced by nursing workforces tangible, measurable and addressable for nurse leaders with the use of AI technology. Through implementation and adoption of CareEffects, nurse leaders have observed incremental improvements in quality and safety outcomes by addressing contributors to workforce strain.
The Need
While there have been many moments of growth and learning on this entrepreneurial journey, one of the most prevalent for Ecoee has been persistence, iteration, and treating every “no” as a lesson.
It takes a long time to finalize contracts with hospitals and health systems. This involves constantly making phone calls to nurses and nurse leaders to understand their needs and opportunities, helping them understand how CareEffects is different from anything they’ve ever had before and identifying leaders who are ready to see data as proactive insight, not punitive evidence.
“It takes a long time to get deals done and so it is more about working to build relationships with nurse leaders so that they understand we are here to help.”
Support from ANA
Ecoee has been a member of ANA since 1999 thanks to her nursing school faculty’s expectation setting for the role of the professional nurse. Stepping into her role as President of Louisiana State Nurses’ Association as the pandemic dawned, she forged relationships across the country with nurses who are now willing to share their relationships and make connections. In 2025, Ecoee learned about the ANA Innovation Award through a fellow nurse innovator and eventually went on to win an honorable mention for her work with CareEffects. From Ecoee’s perspective, it’s a story of innovators lifting up innovators, and nurses lifting up nurses.
“AIl the nurses I've had support from have been so purpose driven, but Olivia and Ori [are] people who are trying to facilitate something among others — It's awesome. That is true leadership and risk taking along with us. They're saying we think if we do this and we invest here, it's going to make a difference. It takes their innovation too.”
Impact
Winning an honorable mention when just starting out was essential for the success of CareEffects. Immediately following the award, their website and social media received more traffic. The monetary award allowed them to attend Nurse Innovator Row at Magnet & Pathway 2025, where they were able to connect with influential decision-makers and leaders interested in innovation and innovative products.
Perhaps more meaningfully, the ANA Innovation Award provided invaluable recognition that help set the company on the right track.
“[The Innovation Award] helped us feel validated and feel seen because we know that a jury of our peers looked at our proposal and saw value in it, saw potential in it. I think that the recognition gave us, besides giving us our own credit for ourselves, it gave us credit out there to link ourselves to ANA in a way that was pretty powerful.”
What advice would Ecoee give her past self?
“I would just say keep going, Rooney. You got this. I would just say keep smiling, keep calling and keep trying. Keep meeting, keep listening and keep talking. You'll find the right people who are ready to try something no one has done before.”
What’s Next
As of February 2026, CareEffects is conducting a pilot with its second health system. Through these partnerships, they are able to form relationships with other health systems contributing to their goal of reaching more hospitals. Having started this work in inpatient settings, they are venturing into pediatric spaces, which requires different modelling but has so-far proved promising.
“I hope that we can be a big contributor in transforming work environments for nurses and creating the type of leadership workforce that nurses need right now.”
Learn more about CareEffects on the Indicator Sciences website.
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