PLAY-LEARN-HEAL: Co-creating connected and empowering solutions for the hospitalized child

CHALLENGE

HOW TO CONNECT AND EMPOWER EVERY CHILD AT THE

CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL?

Play

LearnHeal

PRACTICAL• How to increase every child’s agency at

the hospital and beyond?• How to keep hospitalized children

connected to their families, peers and communities?

• How to ease young patients’ stress and anxiety? 

• How to harness new media and digital technologies?

METHODOLOGICAL• Which methods and models of design

are needed for creating solutions that are able to address the diversity of goals and needs of hospitalized children?

• How to facilitate co-creation processes in multidisciplinary teams that take the needs and interests of the child at the center of their attention?

UNPACKING THE CHALLENGE

Play

LearnHeal

Taking human values and children’s agency as

starting points

Embracing co-creation and

experimentation

Interdisciplinary expertise

Collaborating with national

and international

teams

APPROACH

TEAM

The child

THIRD SECTOR AND BUSINESSES

Uusi Lastensairaala 2017

Designers, architects, artists, producers, serious games

developers

EDUCATION

City of Helsinki

Hospital schools

ACADEMIA

Teacher Education, UH

SimLab, Aalto University

Playful Learning Center, UH

HEALTH CARE

HUS

TYKS

INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION

Project M@ch, Monroe Carell Jr. Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital

CoLab, Uni. of Missouri, St. Louis

SAVEH, Universidad de La Laguna

d.school, Stanford University

METHOD

• Co-ordinated ethnographic case studies in the pilot hospitals to advance design collaboratives

• Iterative co-design projects:

★

★★ ★

Empathize

Define

Ideate

Prototype

Test

Co-design

OUTCOMESSocial, material and digital solutions for children’s care journeys at the hospital that:➜empower children ➜decrease stress and anxiety➜connect children with families,

peers and other communities ➜increase accessibility to knowledge

and learning experiences➜expand social supports for learning

and healing

Playful solutions

Mobile solutions

E-learning

RoboticsE-healing

Digital games

Child-centered services

IMPACT• Increasing connectedness, learning and wellbeingFor children and

families

• Promoting every child’s empowerment during their care journeys at the hospital and beyondFor hospitals

• Novel models of human centric co-design• Transdisciplinary scientific results and publications

For research

• Proven concepts, prototypes, and digital solutions for local and global useFor companies

• Tackling acute societal challenges surrounding every child’s equal rights to a quality of life, care and learning

For society