From magic keys to tricycle horns, ‘generate’ lab at UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s makes it happen

CEDAR RAPIDS — Finding the lab is easy. You enter UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s Hospital on A Avenue NE, make a right at the gift shop, and look for the large wooden door on the right. Peering through the windows on either side of the door, you’ll see a bright, tidy room with collections of wires strewn across a workbench. Potted plants line the windowsills and, in December, old medical equipment decorates a 3-foot-tall Christmas tree.

The lab is quiet from the outside, but once you step through the door you’re greeted by the gentle hum of a 3D printer as it traces a pattern in plastic. Inside, it’s easier to admire how organized the space is, with tools neatly stored along the walls and past projects on display in colorfully lit cases.

This is generate@UnityPoint Health-Cedar Rapids, a place where medical professionals and engineers come together to create tools that help patients and providers alike. The playfulness of the lab, sometimes called a hospital makerspace, evokes one of its client populations: pediatric patients. Inventions from so-called magic keys to tricycle horns have been created in the lab to ease kids’ anxieties before surgery, motivate them to work on their occupational therapy homework and make them feel seen.

Putting the power to unlock doors in patients’ hands

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When Jordyn Alberts brought a young patient into the operating room one day, surgical tech Demetris Johnson noticed the patient had Alberts’ badge. Alberts had given it to them so they could unlock the room themselves, giving them a little bit of control during an overwhelming experience.

Another strategy Alberts uses to calm her patients is to paint the surgical experience in a magical light.

“I think the art of distraction is really good for a toddler or a kiddo coming in,” Alberts said. “When you can distract them and think that this place that we're going to is magical, it gets them excited to come back and actually follow a stranger.”

Johnson liked Alberts’ thinking, but wanted to make something they could give to patients without worrying about it getting lost. And thus, the magic keys were born.

To be clear, they don’t actually open any doors.

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“They think it’s the key, but we really have the magic, but they don’t need to know that,” Alberts said.

Johnson said he’s worked out a system with DJ Dillon, makerspace program coordinator at generate. Dillon regularly prints multicolor batches of magic keys for Johnson and Alberts to give out, and all Johnson has to do is break the keys apart from the plastic and sand down any sharp edges.

“We’re in a good partnership,” Johnson said. “He kind of knows when I want some or I’m getting low.”

Johnson started working at St. Luke’s in May and regularly passed the generate lab when getting to work. He said he was intrigued by the space and had been looking for an excuse to make use of it.

“This was my in to come down here and play with their 3D printer,” Johnson said.

Devices for dolls normalize different ways to talk

Morgan Kellogg’s patients don’t always use their voices to communicate. Kellogg, a speech language pathologist at UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s Witwer Children’s Therapy, works with children and adults who use alternative augmentative communication, or AAC devices, to talk.

The devices, which are tablets with a set of vocabulary buttons, help patients with speech and language challenges express themselves.

“Verbal communication is not the only way to communicate with others,” Kellogg said. “The things that we usually do on a daily basis, like when we talk to other people, they can do what with the use of another communication device.”

Kellogg said she was inspired by research she read that found creating medical equipment for children’s toys can normalize their use. Both Witwer Children’s Therapy locations are equipped with a satellite makerspace, which Kellogg used to 3D print a miniature AAC device. She also created vocabulary sets with Velcro backs so patients could switch between sets on the toys the way they sometimes do in real life.

They’re a hit.

“I’ve got lots of little kids — as soon as they see them, sometimes they try and push the buttons as if it is their own talker, which is amazing, because that's the whole goal of it, is to see their own little talker in front of them,” Kellogg said.

She described a recent interaction she had with a patient where both the stuffed animals they were playing with used the miniature AAC devices to interact.

It’s not just patients who use the toy AAC devices — Kellogg said parents feel seen by them, and some patients’ siblings use them too.

When toys have AAC devices, Kellogg said, “it makes it more normal when kids get to play with them, and it's not as different or weird to have a different way to communicate.”

Kellogg said the project was made possible through the Witwer Children’s Therapy makerspace.

“If this lab wasn't here, I wouldn't have been able to do it at all ...,“ she said.

Best occupational therapy: Tricycles and video games

One of Izahduddin Ahmed’s occupational therapy goals was to be a better gamer. The 8-year-old likes playing Fortnite, Mario Kart and Minecraft on his Nintendo Switch, but, he said, “it was hard for me to make the fingers stay on.”

Witwer Children’s Therapy occupational therapist Emily Robins observed how he played with the console, and noticed his thumb kept slipping off the right controller. She worked with the generate lab to create a thumb guard for his joystick that would keep it in place.

Ahmed visited the Makerspace earlier this month to test out the device for the first time. Now gaming will join basketball on his list of occupational therapy activities. When asked if his parents might have to take the Switch away from him now, Ahmed replied, “probably sometimes,” grinning.

Megan Annis, another occupational therapist at Witwer Children’s Therapy, needed something for a patient who had limited use of her hands.

“(We) wanted something that was unique to her, that she'd be able to use to motivate her to really use the hand that we've been working on in therapy to work on grasp and pinch,” Annis said.

The result? A custom bell for the tricycle her patient rides daily. When squeezed, the purple bell will play a Taylor Swift song, a song from the patient’s favorite TV show, or a simple ding.

“I've used the lab before to create things for patients,“ Annis said. ”Occupational therapy, I feel, pairs very well with the maker lab because we're always trying to create and adapt things to make things easier for patients so they can participate in their daily life.“

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A special place for collaboration

Dillon, who started working at generate in August 2024, said the tricycle horn is one of his favorite projects he’s worked on so far. After researching the electronic components required to make the horn’s sounds, he created the bell by embedding an electronic force sensor in a silicone mold. When Annis’ patient squeezes the silicone bell, the sensor will detect her grip and trigger one of the songs.

“Right now, we're just figuring out the puzzle piece that is the wiring and all of it, and it's very close,” said Dillon, who studied engineering and art at the University of Iowa.

Dillon worked with Alberts and Johnson, Robins and Annis to bring their projects from concept to reality. He said the process typically starts by chatting with a patient or provider about their idea, sometimes sketching out an early prototype on a whiteboard before working with the product’s intended user to develop it.

Rose Hedges, the lab’s nursing research and innovation program manager, works with him to ensure everything the lab produces is safe for patients to use.

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Since the lab’s inception in 2019, Hedges said 1,200 projects have been completed. Those projects don’t just benefit St. Luke’s — generate serves all UnityPoint Health locations. Hedges said the lab may look into mobile services or working with other hospitals over the internet in 2026.

Dillon said the lab’s central location in the hospital and the culture of teamwork at St. Luke’s makes it a special place for collaboration. It’s available for all staff, from surgeons to maintenance workers, to use, he added.

“They can make things to help other patients, to help out people in the hospital, to make things easier, because they can just do it themselves,” Dillon said. “It's just nice that there's a space right here. They can come down and make stuff with us.”

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