The nexum agency is developing the virtual reality app Kinderinsel (Children's Island) in collaboration with the University Department of Paediatric Surgery at Inselspital. It uses a VR story, an interactive operating theatre and a 360° video tour to prepare children and their parents for an upcoming operation.
More than half of children who are about to undergo surgery suffer from anxiety, which in extreme cases can have a noticeable and measurable negative impact on post-operative processing and the healing process.
Under the title Children's Island, the agency nexum has developed a virtual reality app in collaboration with the University Department of Paediatric Surgery at Inselspital, which allows children between the ages of 5 and 10 and their parents to optimally prepare for an upcoming operation using their own smartphone and the Cardboard glasses provided. The new VR app aims to reduce anxiety and uncertainty in a positive way.
Discover and listen
The app is based on both an explorative and a narrative didactic approach and consists of three chapters: an immersive VR story, an interactive operating theatre and a 360° video tour. Throughout the VR app, the children are accompanied by the likeable children's island penguin Kimi, who appears at various points and explains everything about the upcoming operation.
In the story, the child experiences, from the perspective of another child, the journey from admission to hospital, through the operation to discharge and learns about three common types of operation using display boards designed for children. In the interactive operating theatre, the child is then given the opportunity to move around freely in a virtual operating theatre and have the various devices and equipment explained to them. In various 360° videos, the child has the opportunity to discover rooms such as the operating theatre, a hospital room, the reception area, etc. and gain an impression of the real conditions on site.
From the focus group to VR realisation
nexum designed and realised the innovative virtual reality app over several stages. The various development steps included developing the didactic approach, developing the story, creating the texts, creating and designing various 3D-animated protagonists (penguin, child, parents, various medical professionals, etc.) as well as programming and technical implementation using the VR development platform Unreal. In the run-up to the conceptualisation, nexum held a focus group workshop with the target group to gather important insights into their expectations and wishes for the VR app and to find out about possible fears in connection with upcoming operations.
Children are accompanied in virtual reality
The Kinderinsel app is primarily aimed at children, but also deliberately involves parents in preparing for the operation. A central feature of the app is therefore the mirroring function, also developed and implemented by nexum, which allows parents to follow what their child sees, does and experiences in virtual reality on a second smartphone.
The bilingual Kinderinsel app is available to the general public and not just to patients of the Insel Gruppe. The app is now available free of charge for iOS and Android:
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/ch/app/kinderinsel/id1457434533
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.nexum.missionOP&hl=de
Source: presseportal
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