when care learns to play: how design is reshaping pediatric healthcare

Changing the Experience of Care

Across hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and research laboratories, industrial designers rethink how medical technologies communicate with patients through designs that transform inhalers into toys, wearable sensors into painted illustrations, prosthetics into superhero-inspired devices, and diagnostic tools into interactive companions.

These projects suggest that curiosity, participation, and imagination can actively improve the experience, and, in many cases, the effectiveness of care. For children specifically, this approach is particularly significant. Pediatric healthcare has traditionally prioritized clinical performance while paying less attention to the emotional realities of childhood. Designers are beginning to reverse that relationship, asking not how children can better adapt to medical environments, but how healthcare might adapt to the ways children naturally learn, explore, and, most importantly, play.

Easy GOOSE, developed by students from Sanming University, Hubei University of Technology, and Yanshan University | image via ifdesign

How play is becoming a design strategy in healthcare

For much of modern medicine, good design is measured through efficiency and reliability. Medical devices are engineered to perform accurately and withstand years of clinical use. Meanwhile, emotional experience was largely treated as secondary. Hospitals, diagnostic machines, and therapeutic devices communicate through the visual language of sterility and authority, asking patients to adapt to clinical environments without questioning whether those environments were designed for the people using them. Nowhere has this disconnect been more visible than in pediatric healthcare. Children entered hospitals built around adult assumptions whose appearance allow fear to take hold.

Inspired by the shape of a sailboat, Ringo, a pediatric IV stand developed by Dabin Won, Hyunmin Kim, and Jaewoo Seo at Hongik University in Seoul, takes a familiar piece of hospital equipment and turns it into something children can move and play with. Lower to the ground and easier to maneuver, it invites children to pull, push, and steer it through the corridors, shifting the mood of moving through a hospital.

Ringo, a pediatric IV stand developed by Dabin Won, Hyunmin Kim, and Jaewoo Seo at Hongik University in Seoul | image via behance

When Treatment Becomes Interaction

Some of the most interesting changes in pediatric healthcare are happening in the everyday objects children use again and again. Respiratory devices, in particular, have become a testing ground for designers exploring how familiar forms and  playful interactions can become part of treatment without changing the treatment itself.

The Easy GOOSE inhaler, developed by students from Sanming University, Hubei University of Technology, and Yanshan University, borrows its form from a friendly goose. Using the device recalls blowing into a party whistle, replacing the visual language of clinical hardware with something instantly recognizable to a child. A similar approach underpins Peppy, developed by Irish designer Keith Fitzsimons for children with cystic fibrosis. Instead of presenting positive expiratory pressure (PEP) therapy as another daily obligation, the device introduces playful interaction into a treatment that can otherwise become repetitive. Neither project promises to make chronic illness enjoyable. What they suggest is that small moments of curiosity can make long-term routines feel less clinical. 

Medical design is also beginning to extend beyond the examination itself. Oneiro, developed by Jiumo Wang together with researchers at ShanghaiTech University and the Eye and ENT Hospital of Fudan University, focuses on the time before children undergo nasal endoscopy for obstructive sleep apnea. Shaped like a conch shell, the interactive device translates each breath into slowly evolving digital landscapes, inviting children to create them in real time while waiting for their appointment.

Oneiro by Jiumo Wang (read more here) | image courtesy of Jiumo Wang

Designing for Inclusion

Healthcare design is also expanding beyond treatment itself, exploring how play can make everyday experiences more accessible. Developed by Shenzhen Alpha Industrial Design, Bubble Braille reimagines the gaming controller through touch. Raised and recessed silicone buttons inspired by Braille create an interface that can be navigated by children who are visually impaired, remaining equally engaging for sighted players.

Bubble Braille brings children together through the same interaction. The tactile controls become a shared language, allowing different sensory experiences to coexist within a single object. Projects like Bubble Braille point to a broader direction in assistive design. Accessibility is no longer treated as an adaptation added after the fact but as a starting point for creating products that can be experienced in multiple ways, inviting more children to participate together through play.

Bubble Braille by Shenzhen IU+Design Co., Ltd. | image via ifdesign

When Medical Devices Become Personal

For years, medical devices have largely shared the same visual language: neutral colors, smooth plastics, and forms designed to blend into clinical environments. Newer projects are taking a noticeably different direction, treating medical technology as something people can make their own.

At Penn State, researchers have developed a conductive ink that replaces adhesive electrodes with a paint-on alternative. Brushed directly onto the skin, the water-based material dries into a flexible sensor capable of monitoring heart, muscle, and brain activity. Because the ink can be mixed with food coloring, it also opens the door to something unexpected. Electrodes no longer need to look like electrodes. They can be painted as sharks, foxes, superheroes, or simple abstract shapes, making the process feel closer to face painting than applying medical equipment.

The same change is visible in the Hero Arm by Open Bionics. Rather than disguising the prosthetic beneath skin-toned finishes, the designers lean into its mechanical character with interchangeable covers inspired by Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney. The arm becomes another way for children to express their interests and personalities.

Taken together, these projects suggest that personalization is becoming part of healthcare design itself. As sensors become paintable and prosthetics become customizable, medical devices begin to move away from anonymous clinical objects and closer to the everyday things people choose to wear, decorate, and identify with.

using a conductive, face-paint-like ink, researchers can now paint electrodes to monitor a wearer’s heart, muscle or brain activity in style (read more here) | image provided by Wanqing Zhang. All Rights Reserved 

THE NEXT GENERATION OF CARE

Industrial designers are expanding what a medical device can be. An IV stand becomes something children can steer through hospital corridors, an inhaler borrows the form of a goose, a teddy bear teaches diabetes management, and electrodes are painted onto the skin like face paint.

These projects reconsider the moments surrounding medical procedures, introducing interaction, familiarity, and personalization into experiences that have long been defined by clinical convention. Many of these ideas emerge through pediatric healthcare, where children offer the clearest reminder that treatment is experienced as much as it is delivered. As wearable technologies, robotics, and assistive devices continue to evolve, they point toward a broader shift in medical design that considers not only how healthcare performs, but also how it feels to live with every day.

Hero Arm | image courtesy of Open Bionics

Peppy by Keith Fitzsimons | image via James Dyson Award

This article is part of designboom’s PLAY chapter, exploring what would happen if form didn’t follow function, but pleasure. Discover more stories that celebrate joy, imagination and playfulness here.

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