Sometimes the best business ideas don't begin with a market analysis, a business plan, or a search for the next big trend.
They begin with a problem that becomes impossible to ignore.
For Sheila Buswell, that problem began with personal experience. As a U.S. Army veteran, she had experienced firsthand what it was like to depend on others for basic activities after being injured during a deployment in Bosnia. Years later, when her mother fell and entered rehabilitation, Sheila watched her struggle with many of the same mobility challenges she had experienced decades earlier.
But Sheila was no longer looking at the problem only as a patient.
She was an engineer.
And she began asking a different question: How could technology help people maintain more independence while also making healthcare workers safer?
That question eventually led her to create Buswell Biomedical and develop Upmo, an AI-enabled mobility device designed to help patients move more safely while reducing the physical strain placed on healthcare workers.
Her story is about much more than artificial intelligence or medical technology. It is about recognizing a problem, questioning assumptions, developing a solution when nobody else appears to be building one, and having the courage to trust your instincts.
When a Personal Experience Reveals a Bigger Problem
Entrepreneurs often talk about finding a market need. Sheila Buswell's journey illustrates what happens when that need is personal.
During her military service, Sheila was injured in Bosnia when a generator fell from a forklift and struck her foot. She became a patient and experienced the vulnerability that comes with needing assistance for something as basic as going to the bathroom.
Years later, her mother fell in Arizona and entered rehabilitation.
Sheila suddenly found herself watching someone she loved experience many of the same challenges.
She explains that her first reaction was frustration. She could see her mother struggling, and she could also see healthcare workers operating within a system that had not changed enough to solve the underlying problem.
As an engineer with years of experience, Sheila began looking at the situation differently.
Instead of asking why the system worked the way it did, she started asking whether there was a better way.
That distinction is important for entrepreneurs. Sometimes innovation doesn't come from inventing something entirely new. It comes from looking at an existing process and asking why everyone has accepted it as normal.
Upmo: Rethinking How Patients Move
The company Sheila founded, Buswell Biomedical, is built around its patented mobility concept, Upmo.
The basic idea is surprisingly intuitive.
Rather than requiring a healthcare worker to physically move a patient every time assistance is needed, Upmo is designed to travel autonomously to the patient. Sheila compares its movement to technologies such as a self-driving vehicle or a Roomba.
Once the device arrives, a patient who is capable of participating can use a specialized harness designed to support mobility.
The goal is not simply to lift someone.
It is to help empower patients to participate in movement when they are physically able to do so, while reducing the amount of brute physical force required from healthcare workers.
That distinction matters.
In a hospital or rehabilitation environment, a mobility-related task can sometimes require multiple healthcare workers. Sheila points out that even relatively small patients may require assistance from more than one person under existing procedures.
Upmo is intended to change that equation by shifting some of the work from physical lifting toward stabilization, guidance, and cognitive assistance.
The larger vision is to help patients maintain as much independence as possible while reducing strain on the people caring for them.
The AI Isn't Just About ChatGPT
When people hear "AI," they often immediately think about large language models, chatbots, or tools that generate text and images.
Sheila's vision involves a very different application of artificial intelligence.
One component of Upmo involves machine learning focused on human movement.
The device is intended to learn what normal movement looks like and compare an individual's movement patterns against those patterns. Over time, the goal is to better identify instability and recognize situations in which someone may be approaching a fall.
That creates a fundamentally different kind of AI application.
Instead of asking AI to generate something, the system is being designed to interpret physical movement and assist with a real-world task.
Another component involves navigation.
The device needs to move through a hospital environment, identify obstacles, and navigate around them. Sheila describes this as similar to how autonomous technologies use sensors such as LIDAR to understand their surroundings.
The result is an intersection of robotics, machine learning, mobility, and healthcare.
But Sheila is careful to focus on the underlying problem rather than the technology itself.
The technology is simply the tool.
The objective is safer mobility and greater independence.
What Happens When AI Learns From Human Movement?
One of the most interesting possibilities Sheila discusses is the information that could eventually come from observing how people move.
Falls don't necessarily happen randomly.
There can be patterns of instability associated with standing, sitting, walking, or other everyday movements.
The challenge is identifying those patterns reliably enough to become useful.
Sheila describes the long-term opportunity as building a motion library that could help researchers and developers better understand instability and potential fall predictors.
That could eventually change how mobility assistance is approached.
Rather than waiting until someone falls, technology could potentially identify warning signs earlier and provide appropriate stabilization or assistance.
The distinction is significant: prevention rather than reaction.
At the same time, Sheila's comments make clear that this is an evolving technology. The company still needs significant testing to establish safety and effectiveness before the product can progress through the regulatory process.
That reality is an important reminder for entrepreneurs developing technology in highly regulated industries.
A great idea is only the beginning.
From "Someone Should Build This" to "I Have to Build This"
There is a moment in many entrepreneurial journeys when someone realizes that the solution they are looking for doesn't exist.
For Sheila, that moment came after her mother's experience.
Initially, she thought she would simply find the company that was already developing the solution.
Then she discovered there wasn't one.
So she had a choice.
She could accept that the problem existed.
Or she could try to solve it herself.
She chose the second option.
Sheila describes giving herself a simple internal challenge: "If not you, then who? And if not now, then when?"
That mindset became the catalyst for Buswell Biomedical.
It is a powerful entrepreneurial lesson because many opportunities begin with an uncomfortable realization: nobody is coming to solve the problem.
When that happens, the entrepreneur has to decide whether the problem is worth taking responsibility for.
Building a Medical Technology Company Takes More Than an Idea
The timeline behind Upmo also illustrates how different building a medical technology company can be from launching a conventional product.
Sheila says she identified the potential solution around 2018 and began determining whether anyone else was working on it.
From there, she needed to establish whether her concept was technically feasible.
She developed an initial machine-learning library and collected movement data using inertial measurement units. She worked with a data scientist and gathered specimens across different age groups and demographics to begin understanding movement.
Then came the mechanical engineering challenge.
The device needed to fit through a hospital doorway and maneuver around a toilet. It needed to be stable. It needed to be capable of supporting substantial weight.
According to Sheila, the mechanical prototype was tested to lift up to 500 pounds at a reasonable speed.
That is a long way from an idea written on a piece of paper.
It demonstrates the progression that many deep-tech entrepreneurs must navigate:
Idea.
Feasibility.
Data.
Prototype.
Testing.
Regulatory requirements.
Funding.
Commercialization.
Each stage creates a new set of questions.
The FDA Is Part of the Journey
One of the most important realities Sheila discusses is what happens after a working prototype exists.
The next objective is FDA clearance.
But getting there requires demonstrating that the device is safe and effective. That means additional testing, development, and significant investment.
Sheila emphasizes that testing and machine-learning development are expensive.
This is where the entrepreneurial journey becomes more than an engineering problem.
The founder must also become a fundraiser, communicator, salesperson, relationship builder, and strategist.
Earlier in the conversation, Sheila described her day-to-day role as ranging from cleaning toilets and taking out the trash to pitching venture capitalists and angel investors for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.
That contrast captures something fundamental about entrepreneurship.
Building a company means doing whatever the company needs next.
The title of founder doesn't exempt you from the unglamorous work.
Listening to the People Who Live With the Problem
One of the most important aspects of Sheila's approach is her willingness to gather input from the people closest to the problem.
She specifically wants to hear from patients, family members of patients, and healthcare workers.
Why?
Because innovation developed in isolation can miss critical details.
Healthcare workers experience the challenges every day. Patients experience them personally. Family members see the emotional and practical consequences.
Each perspective can reveal something the inventor might not see.
Sheila describes herself as a believer in getting more people involved and gathering more feedback. But she also emphasizes that entrepreneurs need to ask the right questions.
That is an important distinction.
Feedback isn't automatically useful.
Good entrepreneurs learn how to identify the questions that uncover meaningful information.
The Future May Extend Beyond Hospitals
The immediate application for Upmo is hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, where standardized environments make the technology more practical.
But Sheila sees a larger long-term opportunity.
One possibility is helping people remain in their homes longer.
There is a major engineering challenge involved. Homes have different doorway dimensions, layouts, and structural configurations, making it more difficult to create a single mobile device that works everywhere.
But the motion data gathered through the technology could potentially reveal other ways to support people at home.
For example, if the system can identify moments when a person is consistently unstable while standing, that information could potentially influence how the home environment is designed or where stationary support equipment is placed.
The ultimate concept is not necessarily to bring the entire hospital into the home.
It is to understand human movement well enough to help people remain independent for longer.
Entrepreneurship Requires the Courage to Challenge Assumptions
One of the most valuable lessons in Sheila's story has little to do with AI.
It has to do with assumptions.
Sheila points out that people often have limited ideas about what robotics or artificial intelligence should look like.
When someone says "robot," people may imagine a humanoid machine.
But robotics doesn't have to look human.
A robot can fold laundry.
It can wash dishes.
It can package products in a factory.
Or it can help a patient stand safely.
The important question isn't whether the technology looks futuristic.
The important question is whether it solves a meaningful problem.
This is a useful perspective for any entrepreneur.
When evaluating an opportunity, it is easy to become constrained by what already exists. We look at competitors, existing products, accepted processes, and conventional wisdom.
Innovation often begins when someone asks:
What if it didn't have to work this way?
Trust Your Gut—but Keep Testing the Idea
Sheila's final message is simple: trust your gut.
But her own story demonstrates that trusting your gut doesn't mean ignoring evidence.
She had an intuition that there was a better solution.
Then she tested it.
She gathered data.
She worked with a data scientist.
She developed prototypes.
She tested mechanical capabilities.
She pursued a patent.
She gathered feedback.
And now she is working toward the testing and regulatory requirements necessary to move the technology forward.
That is an important distinction for entrepreneurs.
Intuition can tell you where to look.
Testing tells you whether you're onto something.
Sheila also makes an important observation about why people sometimes discourage unconventional ideas. It isn't necessarily because they want you to fail. They may simply be evaluating your idea through the lens of their own experiences and education.
Their perspective may be valid for what they know.
But it doesn't necessarily define what is possible.
Entrepreneurs have to be willing to consider information from others without automatically surrendering their own vision.
What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Sheila Buswell
The Upmo story illustrates a broader entrepreneurial principle: meaningful businesses often emerge when someone becomes unwilling to accept an inefficient or painful process as inevitable.
Sheila didn't begin this journey because she wanted to build an AI company.
She began because she saw a problem that affected people she cared about.
Her engineering background gave her a way to think about solving it. Her personal experience gave her motivation. Her entrepreneurial journey required her to turn that solution into a company.
And the process continues.
There is still testing to complete, funding to secure, feedback to gather, and regulatory work to navigate.
That is entrepreneurship in its real form.
Not simply having an idea—but staying committed long enough to discover whether the idea can become something useful.
The Bigger Lesson: Don't Let "That's Just the Way It Is" Stop You
Perhaps the most powerful takeaway from Sheila Buswell's story is the danger of accepting existing limitations as permanent.
For years, patients needing mobility assistance and healthcare workers providing that assistance operated within the same basic framework.
Sheila saw the problem from both sides.
She experienced it as a patient.
She watched her mother experience it.
Then she looked at it as an engineer.
That combination allowed her to see an opportunity that others had not pursued.
For entrepreneurs, innovators, and business leaders, the lesson extends far beyond healthcare.
Look closely at the problems people have learned to tolerate.
Listen when customers say something is frustrating.
Pay attention when employees repeatedly work around the same broken process.
Notice when people say, "That's just how it's done."
Those statements can sometimes reveal opportunities.
The next breakthrough may not come from creating something nobody has ever imagined.
It may come from solving a problem everyone else has simply learned to live with.
And sometimes, as Sheila Buswell's story demonstrates, the first step is trusting your gut enough to ask whether there is another way.
Keep Building What Matters
Sheila Buswell's journey from Army veteran and engineer to healthcare entrepreneur is a reminder that innovation often starts with lived experience.
Her work with Buswell Biomedical and Upmo combines personal purpose with engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and entrepreneurship in an effort to address patient mobility and caregiver strain.
But the entrepreneurial lesson is broader.
See the problem.
Question the assumption.
Listen to the people affected.
Test the idea.
Keep learning.
And when everyone around you sees only one possible way forward, be willing to ask whether there might be another.
If you're working on your own business, developing a new idea, or trying to turn experience into meaningful action, explore the resources and business development opportunities available through Glovisor.
Because sometimes the opportunity isn't hiding in what you already know.
Sometimes it's hiding in the problem you can't stop thinking about.