NIH Funds Multisite Study of Q-rounds at Two Children's Hospitals

The NIH has awarded a major, multisite research grant to study Q-rounds in general pediatric care. The grant is led by Dr. Michelle Kelly at the University of Wisconsin and brings together two children's hospitals: UW American Family Children's Hospital and UC Davis Children's Hospital.

The study asks a question that matters to every family with a hospitalized child. Does getting the right people to rounds make those children safer?

Rounds are often a family's one chance each day to talk with their child's care team. When families and nurses are in the room, care decisions get made with the people who know the child best. Yet at many hospitals, more than half of rounds happen without a family member or a nurse present. Q-rounds was built to close that gap. It sends real-time updates so families, nurses, and interpreters are there when rounds reach the room.

Our early work at the University of Minnesota NICU tripled family and nurse presence on rounds. That NICU has now run more than 25,000 rounds with families using Q-rounds over two years.

This study takes the next step. It's a rigorous, independent evaluation across two hospitals, designed to detect whether Q-rounds reduces harmful medical errors. It will also examine whether Q-rounds can close participation gaps for families facing language, socioeconomic, and geographic barriers, and what it takes to put this in place and sustain it across different health systems.

We're grateful to Dr. Kelly and the full team of investigators for taking this on. Independent research like this is what turns adoption into evidence.

Congratulations to everyone carrying it forward. We're honored to be part of it.

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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C – Novant Health is transforming how families stay connected during a loved one's hospital stay through Q-rounds, an innovative, real-time rounds coordination technology, with implementation across both pediatric and adult care settings—including the platform’s first use in the United States for adult inpatients and intensive care patients.

Originally launched in the neonatal intensive care unit, Q-rounds helped transform how families participate in bedside care conversations by helping them know when care teams will arrive and making it easier to join important discussions about a patient’s care. Novant Health is now extending that approach to adult inpatient and intensive care units, where timely updates can be especially valuable as patients' conditions and treatment plans evolve.

During daily care rounds, physicians, nurses and other clinicians meet to discuss a patient’s condition, treatment plan and next steps. Families who opt-in to Q-rounds receive real-time updates about when the care team is expected to arrive and when they are preparing to see a patient. Family members who cannot be at the bedside can now RSVP to join rounds remotely, listen to updates, ask questions and discuss treatment and next steps.

"One of the ways we’re transforming healthcare is by using innovative technologies to improve the experiences that matter most to patients and families," said Sanjay Gupta, executive vice president and chief transformation officer at Novant Health. “When someone is hospitalized, important decisions are often made during bedside care discussions. By making it easier for families to be part of those conversations, regardless of where they are, we're creating a more connected, transparent and supportive care experience."

For Novant Health’s first family to use Q-rounds, the technology helped remove a common barrier to participation in care. While caring for young children at home, a father was unable to be at the bedside when his newborn son was hospitalized. When the team rounded on his son, he joined remotely, asked questions and took part in the conversation about his baby's care rather than wondering what he had missed.

As part of its initial Q-rounds rollout, Novant Health launched the technology at Presbyterian Medical Center, home to the country’s first adult inpatient unit to use Q-rounds, and Thomasville Medical Center, home to the country’s first adult ICU to use the platform. The rollout also included Betty H. Cameron Women’s & Children’s Hospital and Hemby Children’s Hospital, including its PICU and NICU. Since launching at Novant Health, nearly 350 family members have joined care rounds remotely.

In addition to improving family engagement, Q-rounds helps streamline communication, giving clinicians more time to focus on patient care.

"Every hospital hears the same question every day: 'when will the doctor be here?' With Q-rounds, we finally are able to answer it," said Michael Pitt, MD, co-founder and CEO of Q-rounds. "Novant Health proved this was never just a solution for pediatrics. Anyone who has ever had a family hospitalized and wished they could know if they could get a cup of coffee or go to the bathroom without fear of missing rounds has felt the pain point we’re solving for.  When you engage the whole care team and the family at the same time, rounds get better and so does the care. That's what it means to transform rounds."

Q-rounds will expand to additional Novant Health hospitals and inpatient units over the next several months. When Q-rounds is available on a patient’s unit, the patient and loved ones listed as contacts for the hospital stay will receive information about the service and how to participate.

About Novant Health

Novant Health is an integrated network of more than 900 locations, including 21 hospitals, nearly 800 physician clinics and urgent care centers, outpatient facilities, and imaging and pharmacy services. This network supports a seamless and personalized healthcare experience for communities in North Carolina and South Carolina. Novant Health is nationally recognized for our unwavering commitment to safety and the highest quality care, and we serve as a catalyst for healthcare transformation through clinical trials, leading-edge research, innovative care delivery models and robust virtual care networks. The expertise and empathy of our nearly 44,000 team members along with more than 9,100 independent and employed clinicians are at the heart of Our Cause as industry leaders caring for communities across the Carolinas. In 2025, Novant Health provided more than $2.1 billion in community benefit, including financial assistance and services.

For more information, visit NovantHealth.org. Follow Novant Health on Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn.

View the press release at Novant Health.

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Q-rounds co-founder and CEO Dr. Mike Pitt recently joined Erin O'Brien on the No Operating Manual podcast, a show about building healthcare companies when there's no clear path and no one tells you what comes next. The conversation covered the origin of Q-rounds, the data behind it, and the honest reality of building a company in healthcare. 

The Question No One Tried to Solve

Every hospital has a question that gets asked every single day: "When will the doctor be here?"

For most families and nurses, there has never been a good way to answer it. Families sit and wait, afraid to leave the room and miss the one conversation that matters most. Nurses skip lunch. The whole day bends around a moment.

Q-rounds started by trying to solve that problem. If Uber can give you real-time updates that your driver is minutes away; Great Clips can tell you you are next to be seen for a haircut; and restaurants can tell you when you are going to be seated; Q-rounds can give families, patients, and care teams the dignity of knowing when to be at rounds. At Q-rounds we call that Time Transparency.

It was built by patients, for patients. But solving the patient's problem is not enough on its own.

The Insights That Make it Work

The reality for Q-rounds is, "if we don't make the doctors' lives better, it won't get used."

A tool that helps families but burdens clinicians dies on the vine. So the question became: what is the case for the clinician to want this too?

The answer turned out to be strong. There is a nearly 40% reduction in medical errors when the nurse joins at rounds, and too often nurses are left out simply because they don't know when rounds are happening. Solve the timing, and the nurse is present, the doctor knows everyone is ready, and the family is there for the conversation instead of hearing it secondhand.

The result is a rare kind of product, one where every user thinks it was built for them. Nurses say, "Where's this been all my life? I get to take my lunch breaks again." Families say, "I didn't have to quit my job to be present for rounds because I was able to be notified through Q-rounds." Doctors say they're getting to see six or seven times as many families in less time.

The Data Shows it Works

Erin's reaction to the numbers on the show was direct: "The data is pretty amazing." Q-rounds drives a 197% increase in family presence, a 215% increase in nurse attendance, and we know there is a 38% reduction in harmful errors when nurses are present at rounds.

What started as an efficiency tool became something bigger. As Erin named it during the conversation, "this is care efficiency that's reducing cost of care."

The long-established, best practice in healthcare, especially in pediatrics, of multidisciplinary family-centered rounding is accomplished less than 5% of the time, because coordinating all of those people in one place at one moment is nearly impossible. Q-rounds exists to close that gap.

Be Married to the Problem, Not the Solution

When Erin asked what advice Mike would give other founders, his answer was clear: be married to the problem, not your solution.

You can tell the difference between a company committed to solving a problem and one that simply has an idea for a technology it is sure will work. Founders who stay committed enough to the problem that they would throw out their original idea to get closer to solving it are the ones who tend to make it.

Watch the full conversation

Watch Dr. Mike Pitt on the No Operating Manual podcast with Erin O'Brien: