In our previous blog posts, we have emphasised the importance of validating and evaluating digital health technologies (DHT) to ensure their safety and effectiveness. But what do we mean by “evidence-based” and what standards as well as regulations exist in the health care industry that help demonstrate the value but also increase the adoption of DHT? And what do we in Triumf do to ensure our health app for children is the highest quality possible?

This year has gone incredibly fast and the first half of the year is already over. So, this is a good point to reflect on what has happened so far for Triumf, the progress we have made but also to project forward and see what the next six months will bring us.

Diabetic patients spend up to 40% of the day with excessively high blood sugar levels, which can damage blood vessels and lead to long-term health consequences (Van Dijk et al., 2013). Medication to maintain diabetes is effective to a certain degree, however, studies show that patients still spend up to seven hours per day with abnormally high glucose levels even when drugs are administered (Van Dijk et al., 2013). Clearly, further interventions are needed to minimise the negative effects of diabetes.

In order to help chronically ill children, we need to focus on many aspects. First and most importantly - their mental health - how they are coping, what are their strengths and difficulties. How we can support their strengths and help with their difficulties. But if they already have the disease then we need to monitor how their treatment is followed, we need to give information on their condition, their health and wellbeing, we need to support their general health behaviors so they could live healthier lives and at the same time empower and give a sense of success. These components that are necessary to induce behavioral change work only when these are delivered in a way that kids love. And don’t they enjoy playing games? In our mobile health game kids need to save the Triumfland city from the Disease Monster but how did we come up with that? How did we know about the needs of the users?

Triumf health app is now available for school-aged kids with various conditions with the aim to give them psychological as well as treatment related support and foster healthy lifestyle. Have a look at the pediatric disease paths that the game features.

Triumf Health is now officially a research institution! You can also find our profile from the Research Information System (ETIS) because I (Kadri Haljas) am now acting both as a CEO and a postdoctoral researcher. Check out ETIS for more information.

Chronic illnesses predispose children for higher risk in developing mental disorders. This article gives an overview of the important associations between mental health and chronic illnesses among children.

In our theory driven Triumf game design philosophy, we have combined the mental contrasting and implementation intention theories about self-regulation and behavioral change into our underlying gameplay narrative. Based on mental contrasting theory, we start by giving a player an idealised state of an imaginary city.

Digital health interventions such as the Triumf game have great potential as health improving scalable tools by contributing to the effectiveness, accessibility and personalisation of healthcare delivery. However, digital health interventions (as any other intervention) need to be evaluated using proper research methodology in order to prove effectiveness or at least safety.

Can you imagine that it’s already the third Christmas we are celebrating as team Triumf? This has surely been an eventful year for us thus far. Here we would like to send the warmest seasonal greetings to our supporters and write about our achievements this year. Thank you, team members and everyone else, who are playing a role in this journey!

A lot of our blog posts have focussed on childhood cancer. However, in addition to pediatric cancer patients, Triumf Health also supports children who are affected by obesity and/or diabetes. In this blog post we want to give an overview why we think addressing and treating these conditions is essential.

The importance of physical activity and harmful effects of inactivity are becoming more and more evident. Organisations are investing more resources to tackle the rising trend of inactivity and the burden it places on healthcare. Having this in mind, in this post we look into the current research of physical activity and childhood cancer patients. Is it actually feasible and beneficial? If so, what should be the next steps?

We applied for Mobilitas Pluss programme that aims to bring young researchers to Estonia to be able to conduct clinical trials based on our solution for ill children.

Has anyone ever told you that you are stronger than you think? Because you are, and here we present 5 superpowers hidden in your body and mind.

When a child is diagnosed with cancer, parents want to know everything about diagnosis and the best treatment options. So they often search the web for them. In our new post we discuss strategies of finding reliable internet sources about childhood cancer.

The following blog post is written by researcher Keiu Paapsi who recently published a paper on childhood cancer incidence and survival in Estonia. Here she gives an overview of the current situation in Estonia compared to other countries and discusses why childhood cancer needs more public attention.

Thanks to the new effective treatments, the childhood cancer survival rates are up to 80% in developed countries. In addition, governments are investing in better treatments and better future for the childhood cancer survivors. Good examples are Norway and Spain.

September is childhood cancer awareness month. For us at Triumf Health it means that every week we are covering one topic related to childhood cancer to raise awareness.

Autumn starts with Childhood Cancer Awareness month. Let’s see why simple awareness can make a big difference in the lives of children with cancer and their families. 

This summer two Finnish universities Kajaani University of Applied Sciences and Oulu University of Applied Sciences teamed up and created online studies on serious gaming and gamification. This awesome project has currently resulted in three online courses, all of those were available for everyone and for free this summer 2017. And we took them all!