Pain Squad
The Hospital for Sick Children
Issue 26 | March 2013
Agency
Cundari
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer: Brent Choi Group Creative Director / Copywriter: Cory Eisentraut Group Creative Director / Art Director: Mike Sipley Interactive Designer: Stuart Thom
Production Team
Account Lead: Mike Orr, Carol-Ann Granatstein Developers: Patrick Lee, Jin Kim, Ali Asim, Wayne Gomes (CTO) Producer: Carol-Ann Granatstein DOP: Rob Dutchin, Kawal Singh Music/Sound: Ed Zych Editor: Cherie O'Connor
Date
January 2012 - present
Background
Every year at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, (or SickKids), hundreds of children are treated for cancer. These young patients have to endure great pain. In order to help them manage it better, the hospital needed their patients to keep daily records of how they felt.
The trouble was that after treatment, many children were too tired to try to keep a detailed report. After treatment however many patients are too tired to keep detailed reports.
Idea
Even kids with cancer are, at heart, just kids. They dislike homework and love videogames.
The idea, then, was an app based on two hit TV shows, “Flashpoint” and “Rookie Blue”, which had all the same triggers as a videogame.
Every patient in the program was given an iPhone loaded with the Pain Squad app. Twice a day they were given an alert telling them it was time to fill in their report.
All the tropes of a Police-based game were there: a precinct, notepads and even badges and ranks.
The iPhone’s gestural interface made it simple for ‘recruits’ to complete their pain-reporting mission. With a flick of the finger, they could identify exactly where and how much it hurt.
To ensure that patients would file their reports as consistently as possible, the App had an engaging reward and graduation structure. Actors from the two TV shows dramas appeared in videos that were deployed throughout the experience. Once a recruit completed 3 reports in a row they were sent a video message from HQ informing them that they were moving up the ranks.
Results
The response to the app was amazing. Since its launch, the rate at which reports were being filled increased to over 90%. This type of compliance rate is unheard of in pediatric medicine. Due to its success, the Pain Squad Mobile App is now being used in four other Canadian hospitals and will soon be made available everywhere.
Our Thoughts
At Directory, we normally like to get work before it has won awards. But we saw this at The Caples awards in December and thought it was so important it should be included. As Jason wrote, “An interesting entry this one. It’s not really an advertising message. But it points to a future where social channels and mobile-based content can make ‘branded utility’ a far more creative place to explore.”
Just as Nike+ was an agency (R/GA) using its profound understanding of technology to add value to a product, this is Cundari adapting technology to the needs of people in ways that developers on their own could (probably) never have imagined.