Finnish Hospital Clowns amuse and engage child patients in hospitals to strengthen their positive patient experience. Together we wanted to expand this interaction beyond face-to-face encounters by creating an app that is a place to have fun and connect whenever you feel like it.

The goal

To create an experience and meeting place that brings children and clowns together. Something that has a message feature but is so much more than just a message app. Keywords in the experience were safe, secure, fun, and comforting.

The experience

The Hospital Clowns app enriches and develops the encounters between the clowns and child patients. It is a place for the child to have fun as well as message safely. In the app, a child can get to know the clowns and their special skills, create their own clown, and enjoy small funny animations. For example, the fart generator makes you laugh again and again! In the clown arena, a child can watch videos and listen to podcasts. All these features are freely available on the open side of the app. The use of the communication feature, the Balloon Post, requires a clown key from Hospital Clowns. The Balloon Post is secure and anonymous, and it complies with the requirements of healthcare applications.

The results

The Hospital Clowns app brings joy and comfort to both long-term patients and shorter hospital visits. It has made it possible for children and clowns to continue interacting outside of face-to-face encounters. The positive feedback especially from the children has made every clown's heart beat with joy. In 2022, clowns met children more than 22,500 times. The application brings additional content to these meetings and helps expand the connection. The longest conversations between children and clowns in the Balloon Post have continued for more than 6 months, i.e. since the application's early days.