Final Master Project

Hospitalization is a frightening and stressful experience for children, and it can be emotionally and physically damaging. Children not receiving correct or enough information before their hospital visit, can result in increasing worries, fears and anxiety. This can increase a child’s pain and distress which can be hazardous to a their physiological and psychological health. The Wilhelmina Kinderziekenhuis (children's hospital) has been working on pain and fear reduction in children. They have many interventions they can use to distract the children and/or reduce pain before, during and after treatment. However, children are often not well informed and do not know the possibilities.

Providing children with educational preoperative information, can enable them to gain control over their hospital environment and upcoming medical treatment. However, current information technologies are generally aimed at distracting the patients when they are already admitted or are not digital and therefor hard to integrate in the hospital system (HIX). This lead to the question: “How can a digital paediatric hospital information tool be designed through co-design, aiming to increase children’s control in order to reduce preoperational anxiety?”

Through a participatory design process, co-design sessions were held with children aged 8-10, medical professionals, parents and patients to investigate what such a system could look like, how it could function and what kind of information should be given. Additionally, by working together with the Wilhelmina Kinderziekenhuis, I was able to frequently speak with medical professionals and discuss their experiences. This has led to the creation of WhizzKid; a personalized interactive application on which children and parents can prepare for their hospital visit and choose interventions to reduce pain and fear.

* As the hospital will use this prototype for further evaluation an development of the actual system, it has been created in Dutch