Smileyscope

Bringing virtual reality into the pediatrician’s office

Smileyscope1 1

Nobody likes the sight of a needle, especially kids. 60% of children report severe pain when their pediatrician uses a needle to draw blood or administer an IV. Yet these are necessary procedures, which begs the question: if you can’t eliminate the needles, how do you alleviate the pain? The team at Smileyscope were determined to find an answer.

Using virtual reality to offer a change of scenery

We created a virtual reality experience that transports children from the doctor’s office to an underwater seascape during their procedure.

It is totally immersive; we even coordinated the pediatricians actions with VR animations. For example, when the pediatrician cleans the patient’s skin with an alcohol swab, the patient sees soothing waves washing over their arm.

If he had no goggles and just watched, I think he would have been climbing the walls. They were amazing at distraction.

Patient’s Mother

A hit with patients & caregivers

Smileyscope is one of the first proven, successful pediatric VR interventions. After more than 80 clinical trials, patients reported a 60% decrease in pain and a 40% decrease in anxiety when using Smileyscope during a procedure. What’s more, caregivers responsible for those patients reported a 75% reduction in distress.

Smileycope won several awards for the effort, including the 2019 Webby award for best VR Experience.

Questions?

Managing Director Family & Kids, Two Bulls/DEPT®

Joey Egger

Discover more

Next Case

Scouts Australia

Personalize your experience

We use functional cookies to make the website work properly, analytical cookies to measure your behavior and marketing cookies for ads- and content personalization. We collect data on how you use our website to make our website easier to use, but also to tailor or personalize communication in advertisements, on our website or apps. Data collected through marketing cookies is also shared with third parties. By clicking accept you agree to this. More information? Read our cookie policy.