This small project was a great example of what the team loves doing, and does so well. We were honoured to be able to partner with the Picker Institute and the Evelina London Children’s Hospital patient engagement team for this work.
Superkids was commissioned by NHS England in February 2015 as part of a call to develop innovative Patient Centred Outcome Measures (PCOMs) for children and young people with a range of health conditions.
Tim Kelsey, National Director for Patients and Information at NHS England, explained at the time: “This is all about asking young patients what is most important to them. The NHS wants to pioneer new approaches to measuring quality in health care, and putting patient and carer voice at the centre of this is key.”
Superkids focused on children who have been inpatients. Rather than restricting the questions to certain clinical conditions they decided to develop a measure that was relevant across all conditions. Children from 5 years to 10 years were the target, as this group are often heard the least. The aim was to develop a measure that could be completed by all children within the age group, without the help of any carer, or adult.
Stage 1:
The first focus group run brilliantly by the psychologists from the engagement team with children who had all been hospital inpatients for different reasons and lengths of time. These inpatient ‘experts’ then started to choose the themes that were most important to them. They did sketches that the animator too back to the studio.
Stage 2:
The second focus group was a chance to look at some of the avatars, transitions and get more feedback.
Stage 3:
A unique Evelina website was set-up, the voice over for the avatars was recorded (thanks Josh G) in our favourite studio Shock Productions and the first version was rolled-out
Stage 4:
The Picker team performed cognitive testing on a new group of children using android iPads (Superkids works on iOS and Android)-this time actually inpatients in the hospital.
Stage 5:
As a result of that feedback the software was adjusted to get timings just perfect, and make sure training was sufficient for everyone. Our programmers had to work with algorithms to let fast learners progress quickly, but train the slower (or younger) learners for a little longer.
Stage 6:
Design the dashboard and the data to export to allow actions and improvements to be made.
That’s all! Together we delivered this entire project in four months-its hopefully the first of many examples that will lead to all questionnaires for children being delivered electronically via engaging avatars that can take the children on a meaningful journey, and capture meaningful answers.