In 2018, four days after my 22nd birthday, I was hit by a car. I was a senior studying biomedical engineering, a few months from graduating and less than a year from starting medical school. I spent three weeks in the ICU and trauma unit with a shattered left leg and a broken back, but all I could think about was getting back to class. Still bedridden, I pushed to be transferred to inpatient rehab so I could stay on track for graduation and my dreams of becoming a doctor. Within a week of arriving, I developed a stage 4 bedsore on my heel. It stopped my recovery cold, adding three months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to it, and nearly cost me my leg below the knee.
I finished that semester online, returned the next in a wheelchair, and graduated on time, even managing to walk across the stage to receive my degree. But by then my plans had changed. While I was healing, I learned that bedsores are almost entirely preventable with proper care. If one could happen to me, young, fit, and otherwise healthy, it could happen to anyone, and every day it does. So instead of going to medical school, I started JXN Technologies with my high school friend, Cole. Our mission is to end preventable harm in long-term care by building accessible technology that improves resident outcomes while supporting the teams who care for them, so that the right choice is also the easy one.
Eight years later, with more than a dozen surgeries and counting, I am still living in a body that reminds me every day why our work matters. Every facility that partners with us helps make sure someone else's story never includes the chapter mine did.
Ian Jackson, Founder and CEO
