Little Journey is an innovative digital health platform which supports children and their families within healthcare settings.
It was founded by clinicians and designers with the hope to help improve how children experience healthcare, reducing anxiety, improving understanding, and making care more child centric. It has a mobile app which can be used for families and a web portal for hospitals and healthcare organisations to customise and manage their content depending on procedure and hospital.
Provide children with an interactive 360° tour to help them navigate their hospital visit. Each tour has engaging characters who walk families step-by-step through their visit, whether it's for a blood test, an MRI or surgery as well as being introduced to the key rooms, equipment and healthcare professionals they may meet.
Through a series of child-narrated and playful animations, children and young people are guided through deep breathing, body relaxation exercises or therapeutic games to help children calm fears or cope with anxiety.
These exercises were designed with paediatric psychologists and health play specialists to ensure it would be a powerful tool that promote calmness, build emotional regulation skills and help manage their stress. For children visiting hospital, these coping strategies are essential for a more positive patient participant experience and to reduce anxiety and distress.
Little Journey provide articles, checklists and site contact details to parents through the app which they can search, favourite or filter to make it simple to find and organise relevant content.
The info is designed by experts to recognise and support the crucial role parents and caregivers play in their child’s healthcare experience and compliance with care as well as keeping them informed.
Little Journey is widely adopted across at least 50 NHS Trusts and hospitals to help children prepare for medical procedures and reduce anxiety.
Hospitals such as Great Ormond Street Hospital and Sheffield Children’s use the platform to support paediatric patients through virtual tours that familiarise children with hospital environments while the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children uses the app to support autistic children undergoing dental procedures, reporting significant reductions in anxiety. Ipswich Hospital highlights strong parent feedback on the app’s effectiveness for surgery preparation and the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital uses Little Journey to help calm children and families before their visits.
“Thank you so much for developing such an amazing app!! I used it for my 4-year-old daughter's journey through surgery at Ipswich Hospital. She’s so anxious usually and this app was like a magic wand! She knew exactly what to expect and completely got into the role of the patient! Absolute god send Thank you" - Parent of child
"We used the Little Journey app to help a 9 year old girl recently who was very anxious and has autism. Her previous procedures have been a real challenge due to this. After the patient downloaded and used the app, it was a much less stressful situation, simply due to the immersive distraction she experienced from playing with the app." - Consultant Paediatric Anaesthetist Dr Alyson Walker
"The effect of using the Little Journey app was transformational with Alexander excited instead of scared for his ‘big adventure’. - Alexander Aged 7, Father of Child