Few things are scarier for children than a trip to the doctor. Courtney Hill would know – as a pediatric ear, nose and throat surgeon, she spends her days coaxing and consoling kids through medical procedures.
Several years ago, she was conducting research at the University of Minnesota into neurobiology and the anxiety that's often triggered in healthcare scenarios. Hill and other researchers found that, in particular, a lot of kids dread going to the dentist.
"Unlike vaccines, theoretically going to the dentist doesn't hurt," she said. "But it goes against some basic human instincts. We want to protect our head and neck area because it's keeping us alive. If you're in a new place, you're scared, then a stranger asks you to open your mouth...that's just not going to happen. It's just a tough situation. Especially for children."
In 2017, Hill and Adam Choe, who is also managing director of gener8tor Minnesota, created Yonder, an app that aims to decrease dental anxiety in young children using mixed reality and a cartoon hippo named Mimi.
Yonder creates special apps for each dentistry practice it works with, offering patients and their parents actual footage of the office they'll visit and the dentist they'll see. This tour is guided by Mimi at a child's eye level. Parents receive a notification for the app download when they receive an appointment-reminder text.
Hill and Choe were fellows at the Earl E. Bakken Medical Devices Center when they began working on the idea behind Yonder. They've received some seed funding from the Pediatric Device Innovation Consortium and Minnesota's Discovery, Research and InnoVation Economy. Yonder spun out of the University of Minnesota's Office of Technology and Commercialization in late 2017.
As leader of the local gener8tor accelerator, Choe has mentored and worked with more than 35 companies over the past two years. He's also spearheaded gBETA Medtech.
"It's been a very positive experience for me as a founder," Choe said. "The ability to understand what it takes to be an investible company gives me a fighting chance to go out there and build something people will like."
The app is currently being used by two dentistry practices in Maple Grove and North Oaks. Choe said the company is in talks with about a half-dozen other offices around the Twin Cities.
"We continue to gather really strong evidence for what we think is a great platform to help kids prepare for dentist visits," Choe said.
"We went through a pilot with parents who said their kid had a hard time coming to the dentist office, and the uniformly left the appointment saying that the app totally helped," Hill added. "Normally, x-rays are a huge battle. It's another level of strange and new. But with these kids, they were just asked to 'Open their mouth like Mimi' and they did it."
Choe says that the company is still collecting data about its platform and will know by the end of the year if they're ready to begin raising funding.
"I think we have a fantastic opportunity to help kids with something that seems fairly basic but can really make a difference in dental care," Hill said. "That's so important growing up. I think we're on to something exciting, and I hope we can make an impact."
