Betty Rozier and Linda Vallino

The mother-daughter team of Betty Rozier and Linda Vallino, of Hazelwood, Missouri, invented a simple device that makes it safer and easier for hospitals to provide patients with IVs. 

Linda Vallino, RN BSN, worked for many years as an emergency room and pediatrics nurse. Like most nurses, she learned to improvise methods of treatment in the absence of standard equipment.  For example, nurses would commonly cut a plastic cup in half and then tape it for protection around the site where an IV needle enters an arm or leg; this makeshift method was clumsy and could even be dangerous. 

Vallino decided to invent a better way.  She designed a polyethylene site protector, shaped like a computer mouse that is soft, smooth-edged, transparent, and attachable with a single piece of tape.  The “IV House” is safer, quicker and less expensive than other methods of IV site protection.  It also reduces physical and emotional trauma to patients.

Vallino enlisted her mother, Betty Rozier, to help research, refine, patent and market the device.  Earning a patent in 1993, the duo’s on-site demonstrations convinced over 100 hospitals to make the IV House standard equipment.

Betty Rozier and Linda Vallino won local and national awards for their inventiveness and entrepreneurship.  Meanwhile, their IV House continues every year to benefit more health care providers and patients nationwide.