Avatars, collecting coins, transitioning between stages - a new application developed in Rambam will help children deal with leukemia. The application, which is "disguised" as a computer game, will personally accompany the young patients in the hemato-oncology department throughout the treatment period. The goal: to make the child and the parent partners Active in the coping and recovery process.
It's an app with a name that sounds like a magic word, and maybe that's what it really is: starting this week, the treatment of children treated for leukemia (a type of blood cancer) at the "Ruth" Children's Hospital in Rambam will be accompanied from the diagnosis stage by a unique application (app) that was specially developed For them called "TaDam". Like any application aimed at a young audience, it includes tasks, overcoming obstacles, using avatars and meeting characters that the patients will join in their recovery journey.
Leukemia cancer
Leukemia is a rare disease but is the most common type of cancer among children. The disease erupts violently and the diagnosis itself causes the child or adolescent being treated and his parents, along with all the circles close to him, to be flooded with information along with emotional flooding. Already on the day of the diagnosis, the young patient enters the hospital and a treatment protocol is formulated.
"The huge amounts of information, together with the accompanying shock from the moment of receiving the good news, makes it difficult for parents, and sometimes also for their children, to internalize everything they are going to face at that moment." This is how Dr. Nira Arad, director of the pediatric leukemia service and deputy director of the hemato-oncology department, at the Ruth Children's Hospital in Rambam, explains, and this is how she developed the idea for the app. "We recognized the difficulty of containing this load of information at such a critical and complex point in time for the family, and we thought of a customized solution for each young patient whose lives changed in one day. This is how the idea for the "TaDam" app - "Ta-Dem!" was born.
The applet characterization process
The app's characterization process was done with Daniela Resalski, an entrepreneur and technology innovation consultant, and Moshe Yaakov, who turned the vision into a practical app. The care team of the department presented the developers with the challenges: differences in the type and stages of treatment between the patients, different age groups, the need for flexibility and the implementation of changes throughout the treatment in light of the treatment reactions and more. The idea is to involve the young patients and their parents in the medical process, to increase the feeling of clarity, certainty and activity in the process by providing personalized information adapted to the therapeutic phase.
Immediately after registering for the application, the patient enters a content world (there are three of them adapted to his/her age group) designed as an action game for anything in which he can roam, accumulate points, perform tasks, answer puzzles and challenges and move between stages. For example, in some of the stations in the game, the users answer puzzles and challenges designed as psychotechnical tests, the winning and completion of which moves the patient to a new stage in the game.
The design and conceptual language is reminiscent of popular action games, in which the user must accumulate points and coins and receive virtual rewards. In the case of the "TaDam" applet, additional layers of information have been added through which the user gets to know the "avatars" of the doctors treating the department, view explanatory content about the disease, the medical equipment, the hospital and the area of the disease alongside routine technical guides for actions that the patient must take such as mouth rinses or dressing changes .
"TaDam" is not intended only for the use of young patients. There is a version for adults that is a dynamic work plan for the parents as well, who are the most significant partners in the treatment. Upon receipt of the diagnosis and at the end of each medical stage, already during the visit to the doctor in the ward, the parents receive the treatment protocol for the coming month, and only after scanning the new protocol into the application, a new space opens before the young patient, revealing a new world of content along with an expected schedule for the following treatments. Among other things, you can find practical instructional content through videos of the staff in the department, such as how to take medications and dosage, essential information about them, and more.
"When we came to work on the application, we conducted market research and we were not impressed that such a solution existed elsewhere," says Daniela Raselski. "A lot of thought was put into every detail - it's about hundreds of hours of work by many good people along the way, whose patients' well-being was constantly in front of their eyes. For example, the name TaDam - it's a hybrid of the two Hebrew words "cell" and "blood", something in which Lahem creates the The universal declaration word: "Tadem!" We consciously chose to lean on the well-known sound of the word, and call it "ta-dam" in both Hebrew and English.
The world of content adapted for children
In the development process, a lot of emphasis was placed on the world of content adapted for children, which was done in cooperation with the medical, nursing and psychosocial staff, along with the strictness of the information security procedures and maintaining the privacy of the information therein. With the help of Christine Ashkar, the leukemia coordinator in the department, we worked on developing a solution that would be accessible and efficient for the patients as well as for the staff.
Christine managed the content preparation process and created an efficient working mechanism with the developing company that will be able to be replicated for more content and for many years to come. We took the most difficult thing that parents can receive - the news about the discovery of cancer in their child, and we tried to adapt the various contents to them, to their language, to their cultural background. We tried to introduce a world of color and movement into the complex struggle with the disease. In this way, we seek to make them and their child active partners in the therapeutic journey."
The natural development in the field of doctor-patient communication
Dr. Shafra Ash, director of the pediatric hemato-oncology department, where the unique application will start operating for the first time, says that "the 'blood cell' application is actually the natural development in the field of doctor-patient communication and is a unique model of its kind in Israel. Its use makes it possible to transfer knowledge to the patient and his family in a more optimal way, helps relieve pressures that originate from uncertainty, helps the patient gain control over the process and harness it to obtain better cooperation.
In the future, the application may include a broader personal service envelope, starting with connection to forms, a chat with the treating doctor, a portal to exercise social rights, improved connectivity to online games to play with patients of their age hospitalized in the ward and connection to the hospital's computer systems. The app's development capabilities are many and it's a spectacular world of content now also accessible to our patients, with the ability to adapt the app in the future to the innovations that will come."
The event of the launch of the cell-blood applet ► Watch
