Interactive Butterfly Wall Brightens Wait Times for Pediatric Patients

Remember when going to the doctor meant reading magazines and playing with toys in the waiting room? These days, those things introduce infection control challenges and create work for staff who have to frequently clean them—so Carilion Children's found an alternative.

Carilion Children's Tanglewood Center now has a unique, user-friendly wall display to engage patients and families while they wait to be seen by Children’s providers.

It is an interactive experience for patients that allows users to create a butterfly to release into the display. That butterfly mingles with other butterflies flying through landscape scenes that change with the four seasons. The technology has been used at museums and sports complexes across the country.

Patients can also interact with the content by standing in front of the display. Butterflies will congregate in front of the viewer until the shape of an object appears. Viewer movement will then cause the gathered butterflies to burst apart and fly throughout the scene.  

Butterflies can be created two ways, via a smartphone (scanning the QR reader or by entering the link into a browser) or by using the kiosk.

This is the first display of its kind in the region and Carilion's first interactive display for the system. It was funded by generous donations to the Carilion Clinic Foundation.