With the help of a new app, UF employees are using cartoon characters to guide children with cancer through their treatment.
Patients using the app, called ProtonU, are walked through their upcoming proton therapy with Jefferson, an orange, circular cartoon proton. Proton therapy, which uses lasers to treat tumors, is used to treat young children with cancer. Jefferson teaches them to sit still during the daily 30- to 40-minute treatment, said Kim Todd, a child specialist at Jacksonville’s UF Health Proton Therapy Institute who helped create the app.
“Our patients are less anxious and more familiar with the medical environment when they walk in, so it’s less intimidating, and they’re more cooperative with our medical team,” Todd said.
Todd, 29, said she created the app with help from Flagler College students and Stephen Arce, a UF biomedical engineering lecturer.
The free app was available for download Jan. 19 on iTunes, she said. There have been more than 250 downloads since.
Arce said he began helping with the app after his brother-in-law, a doctor at the UF Institute, said someone needed to help build it. Although he had no coding experience, Arce took on the project, asking his friends to teach him how to build the app.
UF staff have helped integrate the app into patient experiences at the institute, he said.
“They tried to treat a 4-year-old,” he said. “He went through the app, and he learned what the process was, and it got him to sit still through the therapy.”
Screenshot of the app ProtonU
