Little Seed uses VR, games and aromatherapy to ease children’s surgical anxiety; Hilliard CityLab helps scale

Michelle Gadgil, host of Hilliard CityLab Connect and a member of the City of Hilliard communications team, introduced Jeff Penka, cofounder of Little Seed, on the podcast and described the CityLab as an incubator that helps startups bring health‑care technology to market.

Jeff Penka said Little Seed developed Easy Induction — a tablet-based game paired with a pressure sensor and a physical mask — to teach and distract children as they prepare for anesthesia. "If we can put them in a position of control, put them at ease, teach them how to use the mask ... that actually improves the outcome significantly," Penka said. He told the show that Easy Induction completed an early-adopter year and is being launched more broadly in hospitals.

Why it matters: Penka cited an industry estimate that roughly 4,000,000 pediatric surgeries occur annually and that up to 75 percent of patients report preoperative…