Unleashing the Power of Play in a Child Centered Approach to Enhance Patient Experience

Dr. Chris Evans, CEO & Co-Founder, Little Journey

Founder and CEO at Little Journey Ltd, NHS England Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow and NHS Innovation Accelerator Fellow. His company’s aim is to deliver personalized end-to-end psychological preparation and support to families visiting hospital for a procedure, from the comfort and safety of their own home. Little Journey is currently working with the LEGO foundation to create a playful, co-designed solution that will enable healthcare organizations to learn about the needs, preferences and health behaviors of children before they come to hospital. By background, Chris is an anaesthetic doctor and expert in children’s peri-operative anxiety, currently completing a PhD at UCL exploring the impact of design, technology and innovation on children’s anxiety before surgery.

Maureen Dunne, Keynote Speaker, Neurodiversity & Inclusion Expert, NSF Fellow, Women 2.0 Founder to Watch, Kauffman Fellow, Social Enterprise Execution, Board Director and YPO Member

As a member of the neurodiversity community, Maureen Dunne is a frequent media commentator and contributor on neurodiversity and the future of work. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg, Entrepreneur, MIT Sloan Management Review, Chicago Tribune, DiversityQ, Salon, New York Times, People Management magazine, USA Today, Inside Higher Ed, Unleash and Newsweek. A keynote speaker at Stanford University and the National Science Foundation, she was also a featured speaker at The Atlantic Festival where Neurodiversity was included as part of its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion theme for the first time in history.

A successful entrepreneur and business leader, Maureen is the CEO of Nodi.ai and a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization, an invite-only organization for the world’s top chief executives. At LEGO, Maureen helped launch a Social Impact Accelerator Fund to support innovation and entrepreneurship in neurodiversity.

Rachel Callander, Keynote Speaker, Artist & Author of Super Power Baby Project and Super Power Kids

Rachel’s exceptional books celebrate the lives and abilities of children with a range of disabilities and conditions and have been inspired by Rachel’s late daughter Evie, who was born with a very rare chromosomal condition. In the two and a half years of Evie’s life, Rachel learned a lot about the use of language in the health system and has spent the subsequent years continuing to explore the impact and implications of how it is used — to positive and negative effects. Our language shapes our landscape. The words we speak influence the behavior, attitudes and beliefs of ourselves and others. Within high-stakes contexts, such as the sharing of difficult information, our words carry an enormous emotional weight. They can alienate and add trauma, or they can honor and empower.

Dr. Thomas Leth Frandsen, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Project Officer, Mary Elizabeth's Hospital

At Mary Elizabeth’s Hospital, we are focusing on integrating play into the building, the environment, the organizational culture and the workflows and research as we are working with a holistic view of the patient. User needs and user involvement have been the emphasis of the project from the beginning. Patients and staff in children’s hospitals around the world, already use play actively during procedures, treatment, patient education and through adaptation processes. How can this be more systematic and integrated in the daily life at the hospital?

Jamie Galpin, Developmental Psychologist and Specialist Consultant, Special Networks

Jamie Galpin is a founding member of Special Networks and a chartered Developmental Psychologist. He has spent the past 20+ years working in the fields of inclusion, psychology, innovation, participation and learning, with a focus on empowering children and young people. Jamie’s professional background spans roles in play work, family support, lecturing, teaching, training, strategy, policy work and international consultancy. To date, Jamie’s career has seen him partner with a wide array of institutions, from charities and government bodies to global corporations. Each of these experiences has allowed him to work with people and places to design and then lead complex programs that aim to combat social disparities and inequitable design and practice, driving tangible changes in these critical areas.

Dorthe Feveile Kjerkegaard, Experienced Specialist and Project Lead, The LEGO Foundation

Dorthe is a Research Specialist at The LEGO Foundation and is part of a Research Team and a Play and Health Team, investigating the impact of children ìs play and how children experience the benefits of learning through play allow them to thrive or have agency, so that they become creative, engaged and life-long learners. She is focusing on how play can equip the child facing health related challenges to build a 1) sense of security, 2) trust, 3) self-confidence, 4) self-esteem and 5) resilience / agency, so that they can thrive and better cope with the negative consequences of their conditions and stimulate healthy development throughout their life. The Research Team is reflecting on how Learning through Play can benefit the child’s healthy development by collaborating with international research partners to set an international research agenda and integrate the research into the work with international NGO’s, corporates, and public partners.