Vivarra™ patient engagement app is the brainchild of digital-media designer Micaela Blondin, who originally created it for the young son of Vivarra’s founder, David Nolan.

The younger Nolan has autism, and Blondin—who knew the boy loved Godzilla—designed an app for him that depicted the creature popping out of a piece of paper, according to Blondin’s recent interview with Incisal Edge dental lifestyle magazine contributor Liz Dilts.

“His son absolutely loved it, and played with the augmented-reality experience for weeks,” Blondin says, referring to the technology she used to make Godzilla seem to appear in three dimensions. “We knew then that we had something that could make medical environments less scary by giving children a magical experience.”

How does it work?

         “All a patient has to do is hold his or her phone or tablet up to the mural-bedecked walls of a Vivarra-outfitted reception area, and a menagerie of lions and tigers and bears—oh my!—will spring to life, taking the nervous child on a rollicking adventure meant to be a distraction from one’s fears.”

Vivarra invites a dentist to choose one of six themes, designed with support from Imagination Dental Solutions, a company that decorates practices with toys and murals to enthrall young patients.

Step 1: Dentists select jungle, space, underwater, woodland, safari or beach.

Step 2: Vivarra personalizes the app for the doctor’s particular office, incorporating their logo and other unique images, then provides illustrated materials and wall placards to hang or stick to the floor (shown below).

Step 3: Patients or their parents then download the app to be “instantly swept away to an adventurous world that feels like it’s just for them.”

Based in Calgary, Alberta, Vivarra is currently testing the app at offices around the U.S. and Canada, and on its staffers’ children, according the story. Blondin says the company hopes to expand beyond dental into the offices of orthodontists, pediatricians and hospitals.

To set up a demo, contact a Friendly Benco Rep at 1.800.GO.BENCO.