Little Journey Interactive App Helps Relieve Children’s Anxiety From Healthcare Experiences  

Little Journey is aimed at supporting children that are going through healthcare experiences. The London based company provides engaging, interactive and age-appropriate content designed to psychologically prepare and support families throughout healthcare interactions, and can improve healthcare experiences and health outcomes. 

It was founded in 2018 by Dr Chris Evans and Sophie Copley. As an anaesthetic doctor and father himself, Chris witnessed first-hand the distress experienced by children and families coming to hospital for surgery. Partnering with Sophie, an expert in human-centred product design, they created a prototype version of the Little Journey app to support children undergoing elective surgery.

According to Little Journey, peri-procedural anxiety is common, affecting 50-75% of children and 33% of adults. It is the leading complaint before surgery and leads to poor patient experiences, outcomes and organisational financial implications.

With this in mind, Little Journey tackle this issue with their digital eSupport platform that psychologically prepares, informs and supports children and families before, during and after healthcare procedures, all from the comfort and safety of their own home.

Designed to reduce healthcare-induced anxiety, the Little Journey platform delivers interactive and engaging content tailored to a child’s age, procedure type and hospital.

The app also features helpful tools such as: customisable age tailored virtual tours, therapeutic games, appointment scheduling and relaxation animations. 

With an accompanying Little Journey web portal, accessed by healthcare staff, it enables organisations to configure the app content, building virtual patient pathways and editing key information in near real time.

The app has a 97% satisfaction rate from patients and is configured to over 50 NHS trusts plus several healthcare organisations worldwide and is available in 16 different languages.

Little Journey recently raised $3.1 million in a funding round backed by Octopus Ventures, the new investment will be used to generate international growth and expansion.

Joe Stringer partner at Octopus Ventures commented, “the Little Journey team – led by the brilliant Chris Evans and Sophie Copley – have developed a fantastic solution to help alleviate that anxiety, not just for kids but for parents as well, leading to better clinical outcomes and savings for providers.”

Sources: Little Journey, Octopus Ventures