Wrangling a bevy of virtual monsters may distract, educate, and assuage young patients' medical fears.
Throughout the summer, hospitals have been sharing how they've used Pokémon Go as a patient experience measure. Now, St. Joseph's Children's Hospital has taken that concept and improved upon it by creating a hospital-based game app to distract, educate, and assuage patients' fears.
The game—called UnMonsters—is set inside the Tampa, FL-hospital, and invites young patients to wrangle four silly monsters. Players can earn medical "power ups" along the way by answering simple health related questions, like "Do you know how many servings of dairy you should be eating in a single day?" and "What is a stethoscope used for?"
"Sometimes, the best way to conquer our fear is to view things in a different way," St. Joseph's Children's Hospital President Kimberly Guy said in a media release.
"We hope that UnMonsters will give kids and parents a new way of looking at going to the hospital, because when we understand the things that scare us, the monsters don't seem so bad after all."
St. Joseph marketers teamed with interactive design firm Haneke Design to create the app, which was crafted with input from hospital team members and tested with pediatric patients and families.
"To our knowledge, this is the first hospital-based game app in the country," said
Kim Marlatt the hospital's director of marketing. "The app features one-of-a-kind graphics that were custom made specifically for the UnMonsters game."
St. Joseph's is promoting the app via a new website that shows how the game works, gives the background of each monster, and tells the story of the hospital and their patients.
"The UnMonsters are loose, but don't let that scare you. You can round them up with a lasso for more points or hold & drag them one by one if you need to rearrange where they are," the web copy reads.
"Feel like you're getting overrun too fast? Pick up some power-ups to help you get rid of the bigger UnMonster waves. You get 4 different ones each time you play."
A 15-second video tweeted by BayCare, the health system that operates St. Joseph's, teases the game.
The game app is available for download on iTunes and Google Play.