A mobile app developed in Costa Rica seeks to help children who have suffered burns to better understand and assimilate the recovery process in the hospital, the creators reported last Wednesday.
The app presents a manatee named Nonu, a kind of guide so that minors admitted to the Unit for Children with Burns of the National Children’s Hospital, know and understand better the process they will go through in their recovery.
The mobile app, which is free and available from October 26th at the Apple and Android stores, has different sections that include games and information related to admission to the hospital, preparation for surgery, and the process recovery after a burn.
“We celebrate the birth of Nonu, this cute character and the virtual application that accompanies him. Nonu will live among us to support children who suffer burns in their recovery process, to mitigate their fears, answer their questions, and provide them with knowledge and serenity. Our expectation is that Nonu will also have a great job in preventive aspects”, said the director of the Children’s Hospital, Olga Arguedas.
About the project
The project “Help me understand how my burns heal” is developed by the Bionic Foundation, by the Intel Costa Rica company, the Association Surviving Burns, the National Children’s Hospital and students of the Technological Institute of Costa Rica.
“When children enter the Children’s Unit with Burns they face a series of feelings for not knowing exactly what is happening, that is why we committed ourselves to working to help hospitalized patients through technology, exposing The information they need to know is a simple and entertaining way ”, declared the director of Fundación Biónica, David Meléndez.
For his part, Intel Costa Rica’s Director of Government Affairs, Timothy Scott, explained that the company decided to join the initiative, since it is about technology applied to children’s health.
The mobile app is only the first stage of the project; in the second, the objective is to work with patients using virtual reality and augmented reality, which has positive effects when it comes to combating the pain of hospitalized patients, the developers of the application indicated.
The purpose of this technology is to reduce anxiety during painful procedures, thus shortening long recovery periods and reducing the need for medication.
The project began with the Comprehensive Burn Care Unit, but the idea is to expand it in the future to work with children interned in other areas, who also face, in some cases, long internment processes.
