A new app is helping child patients at The Christie understand how Proton Beam Therapy works.
Xploro® has teamed up with the cancer hospital over the last four years to develop the new app ‘Xploro®’ which includes games based on the human body, 3D hospital environments for children to explore, and experiences so they know what’s going to happen while they’re being treated.
The child patient creates and names a character themselves who becomes their virtual friend to lead them through the app.
Xploro® ‘s CEO, Dom Raban, was inspired to develop the ‘Xploro®’ app after seeing first hand the importance of giving children and young people information when they’re being treated in hospital when his daughter Issy was in hospital: “I was struck by the lack of age-appropriate information that was available for Issy – she was far too old for picture books, but too young for adult information. Once Issy was on the mend, I realised that I could do something to plug that gap. At my other company, Corporation Pop, we have a first-class team of app and game designers and developers so it seemed obvious that we put that expertise to good use. After four years of hard work and significant Government funding it’s fantastic to see the app being used by children at one of the hospitals that my daughter was treated at.”
The Christie is the first NHS hospital in the UK to introduce high-energy Proton Beam Therapy, an advanced radiotherapy treatment which precisely targets cancer without causing damage to healthy cells around it.
After trials at The Christie and Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, Xploro® will be available for wider use when it will include an artificially intelligent chatbot which can answer any questions the child has about going to hospital.
