IronKids

Inspiration

Hemophilia is a genetic desease that prevents the platelets form forming blod clots when a blood vessel ruptures due to an injury.

It is suffered by many people around the world, some of them being young kids who do not yet understand the procedures needed for the treatment. This procedure involves several weekly injections to add the clotting factors needed in the patient's system.

For this purpose, we worked closely with both the teams at HP and Vall d'Hebron Hospital Campus to develop a prototype VR game to mitigate the negative experience of this and many other treatments for kids. We also developed a prototype arm rest, well suited for the needs of this specific procedure, to make sure the doctors at the Vall d'Hebron Hospital have an easy and fun way to keep the patients from moving around during such procedure.

This project was motivated by #bitsxlamarato, a hackathon organized at UPC for the non profit LaMarató dedicated to develop software to raise awareness about minoritary deseases.

What it does

The purpose of our project is to solve two big problems involving this particular procedure with kids.

The VR game is meant to distract the patients from the worl around them, making it an immersive audiovisual experience so that the other senses are not the main focus. This is accomplished by using a VR headset, along with an infrarred sensor that helps us detect the movement of one arm (the arm not being used in the procedure), to create an interactive game in which the patient has to focus to complete a virtual task or activity. In our first prototype we focused on the theme of the project, the superheroes like IronMan, so we developed a shooter game inspired in this superhero. Despite that, it is our goal to improve and develop many more games, some not as violent and more creative that the experience does not get repetitive.

On the other hand we created an IronMan hand, along with a support for the patient's arm, meant to keep the patient from moving around while the procedure is being done. The injections have to be very precise, and it is usually the nurse's job to hold the arm tight to prevent the needle from entering the wrong way and not being effective. The purpose of the IronMan hand is to make this task easier and less risky, while making it look fun for the young ones. There are a variety of points in thich the injections take place, depending on the patients needs, but we focused on the main two, the hand palm and the forearm. We designed the first prototype to be reversable for both of the positions required for this two specific entry points.

How we built it

For the VR game we developed a unity ...

To make the arm holder, we used a free 3D design tool to make the stand using basic shapes, and used a free IronMan hand model as reference for the glove. From here, we modified the model to adapt it to our needs, while still preserving as much as the aesthetic appearence as possible, to make it appealing for young kids who like the superhero. We worked closely with the teams at both HP and Vall d'Hebron Hospital Campus to make sure it covered all the needs while still being possible to make.

Challenges we ran into

As any project, we faced many challanges. First of them being time, since Hackathons take place during a weekend, so the time we had to develop a first prototype was very limited. Still, we did our best to accomplish as much as we could in the time we had.

We also had to learn how to use the tools we had, since we had never worked with the software for game developing at this level. We used Unity to make the enviroment and Steam to make it able to run as a VR game. For this we have to thank the HP team, who helped us with the installation of all the software and hardware, and helped us with the issues we encountered along the way.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to be part of this project, and hope that our humble contribution can one day help many kids deal with their particular desease. There are many things to be done to help the people in need, and we hope to bring at least one into fruition and plant our seed.

What we learned

From all the challanges we found we learned a great deal. We also got to work first hand with many professionals that tought us a lot about the tools we used and what we could accomplish with them. We learned the basic tools to make games with Unity and Steam, which we had never used before, and also learned the reality of many people suffering from rare deseases.

What's next for IronKids

We hope to see this project come true, and we will keep working with HP to make the first prototype for testint. From here we will keep improving our product with the hopes of making it easy and accessible to as many people as possible.