Every year at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children thousands of children with cancer are being treated. The worst part of what these young patients have to go through are the painful treatments like surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. The hospital is continually working on innovative ways to minimize the pain being experienced. To help them do this, they need their patients to record exactly how they are feeling on a daily basis. After treatment however, many patients are too tired or discouraged to even hold a pen much less keep detailed reports and unfortunately unless the data is collected consistently, it is virtually useless.SickKids approached us to help find a creative solution to collect this data every single day. And with that, the Pain Squad Mobile App was born.Each child was given an iPhone loaded with our App, then twice a day they received an alert informing them it was time to complete their pain reporting mission. With a simple flick of the finger, kids could easily identify exactly where and how much it hurt. To ensure that patients would file their reports as consistently as possible, we built in an engaging reward and graduation structure. Then to help keep our recruits motivated as they progressed, we enlisted the casts of Canada’s top police dramas, Flashpoint and Rookie Blue, to inform our patients when they were moving up the ranks through a series of motivational videos.The response to the app has been amazing. Due to its success, the Pain Squad Mobile App is now set to roll-out into four other Canadian hospitals and will soon be made available everywhere. So now, thanks to SickKids and their commitment to innovation and medical thought leadership, kids with cancer the world over will have a new weapon in their brave fight.