Village Gamer

Via Creativity Online – An innovative new app from Cundari for the Hospital for Sick Kids (commonly known as SickKids) in Toronto is trying to change the way kids record their pain. Figuring out what kind of pain the patient is in is an important step in the treatment process. But after chemotherapy and radiation treatments, kids are too tired to keep a detailed pain journal.

The Pain Squad mobile app makes the process easy and kid-friendly. Kids were given iPhones with the app, which recruits kids into a ‘pain squad,’ a special force dedicated to hunting down pain. It lets the kids enter in what hurt, when, and which medications seemed to be working.

[vimeo:http://player.vimeo.com/video/41163113]

And to get kids even more pumped, the agency went all out, bringing in familiar faces from Canadian police dramas like Rookie Blue and Flashpoint to offer words of encouragement. There was even a ‘graduation structure’ put in place that let kids complete certain stages and get ‘promoted.’

It’s an inspiring and hugely innovative way that could revolutionize the nature of patient-controlled documentation in cancer research. It is now set to roll out over four other hospitals in Canada in the coming months. The app is not available through iTunes as it is available only to kids going through treatment.