Pain Squad Mobile Application

The Hospital for Sick Children

To help track and minimize pain, SickKids needed to find a way to encourage their young cancer patients to fill out detailed reports daily. By tapping into kids’ love of gaming and technology, we were able to give them some control over their pain and give doctors the tools they need to understand the experience of pain from a child’s perspective. The Pain Squad app saw unprecedented results, with a recently documented 81% compliance rate (vs. 11% compliance for paper-based pain journals.) It is now available in the app store and is being used in other hospitals across Canada. It has also been recognized internationally as a highly innovative and effective creative solution.