Viscale Solutions AS will give children a language for pain
Eline Hørte has lived with long-term pain since a young age. Years of hospital stays, surgeries and rehabilitation showed her how little the healthcare system actually offers when it comes to understanding and managing pain – especially in children.
Written by
Therese Oppegaard
Head of communications, Norway Health Tech
That experience led her to form early hypotheses about what is not working. But instead of jumping straight to solutions, she chose to test them systematically before Viscale Solutions moved forward with developing something new. The goal was to understand what does not work in current practice – and what is required for both healthcare professionals and children themselves to adopt new solutions.
To ensure that the insight work was carried out rigorously, Viscale Solutions brought in Norway Health Tech Lab to support the project. This phase of the project has been funded by Stiftelsen Dam, one of Norway’s largest foundations for health and research projects. Together, they designed a structured process involving insight sessions and dialogue across the healthcare system – with clinicians from several Norwegian hospitals, specialists in paediatrics and paediatric palliative care, and in-depth conversations with families navigating serious illness with their children.
– We believe in patient-driven innovation – where real-life experience creates meaningful technology, says Eline Hørte, founder and CEO of Viscale Solutions.
A language children do not yet have
Today’s systems for understanding and managing pain in children are not working optimally. Many hospitalised children are under-treated, over-treated or incorrectly treated – often because it is difficult to understand what they are actually experiencing. For many, the hospital stay itself is associated with fear, stress and uncertainty. Many of today’s pain assessment tools are designed for adults. When applied to children, they create a gap between what the child actually experiences and what healthcare professionals are able to interpret. Children are not given a language to express how they feel.
This is precisely the language Viscale Solutions is now developing: a visual tool designed to provide children with insight, learning and a way to express pain – while giving healthcare professionals and caregivers a better foundation to understand and support them appropriately. The work is being carried out in collaboration with the design and innovation company K8, which has been working with design since 1998, spanning from physical products to digital platforms. K8 Industridesign, like Viscale, is a member of Norway Health Tech.
The solutions will be tested in close collaboration with the Norwegian Childhood Cancer Society and Oslo University Hospital (Rikshospitalet), in real clinical settings with children, caregivers and healthcare professionals involved throughout the process.
For Eline Hørte, the ultimate goal is to make children’s pain visible enough to be taken seriously.
Read more about the company Viscale Solutions on their website.
Text and photos are re-published with approval from Norway Health Tech.
