Nominet Trust has awarded Corporation Pop £50,000 through its seventh round of Social Tech Seed funding. The award will enable the Manchester-based digital agency to further develop their Patient’s Virtual Guide, an innovative mobile app that accompanies child patients through the hospital system, improving the patient experience by providing relevant information at every point of the journey.
More than 2m children are admitted to NHS hospitals for planned treatment every year but provision of information to prepare them for the experience is poor. However, research shows that patients equipped with prior knowledge about their treatment, experience reduced stress and anxiety, leading to quicker recovery and improved clinical outcomes.
Corporation Pop’s ‘Patient’s Virtual Guide’ app fills that gap with an avatar guide that accompanies the child patient through the healthcare system, improving their experience by providing relevant information, delivered in a fun and engaging way, throughout the journey. Using gamification, augmented reality and artificial intelligence the app provides a friendly ally that helps demystify the process and puts the patient in control.
Peter-Marc Fortune, Associate Clinical Head at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital (and Corporation Pop’s Clinical Consultant) had this to say, ‘I have yet to show this pilot app to anyone, of any age, who has not positively engaged with it, suggesting that, this technology has the potential to greatly improve the healthcare experience for people of all ages across the NHS (and beyond).
Corporation Pop is one of eight social tech enterprises, which have been selected by Nominet Trust to take part in its Social Tech Seed programme. Social Tech Seed is an open grant-funding programme that offers entrepreneurial organisations early-stage investment to develop innovative projects harnessing the power of the internet and digital technologies to deliver significant social change. It has supported 40 organisations through its six cohorts to date. Previous grantees include Open Bionics, who use the latest 3D body scanning and printing technology to create bionic hands that are lightweight, take five days to fit and cost just £2,000, and Alice.si, an online platform harnessing blockchain technology to make charitable giving transparent – restoring trust in charities.
