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 anxiety. He and the hosts said reducing that anxiety can change how children react on emergence from anesthesia and lower traumatic experiences for patients, families and clinical staff.

Origins and partnerships: Penka described Little Seed’s start after a Nationwide Children’s Hospital team developed a VR prototype called Voxel Bay. That prototype won a healthcare innovation award at South by Southwest and led clinicians and commercialization officers to ask how to bring the work to market; Penka said Little Seed formed in partnership with Nationwide Children’s to commercialize the approach. He also said Little Seed has worked with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and other institutions to adapt products and test best practices.

Product and testing details: Easy Induction pairs a pressure sensor inside a mask with age‑appropriate game levels. Children first learn to use the equipment on a tablet, play while they wait and then receive an in‑operating‑room reward level after induction, Penka said. He added Little Seed uses a permanent green‑screen room at Hilliard CityLab for internal testing and baselining before shipping simplified setups to hospitals.

Manufacturing and local ecosystem: Penka said Little Seed designs the electronics and software in house and works with Converge Technologies (John Baer) for board design and small‑run manufacturing adjacent to the CityLab space. "When people talk about just‑in‑time manufacturing, we literally have got to the place with designs where we can have things created for us that we're in turn shipping to customers within a very small turnaround," Penka said, describing a 15‑foot workflow from office to production in Hilliard.

Other projects and safety notes: Penka described a motion‑capture game used in gene‑therapy trials to measure reach and muscle function and discussed an early‑stage aromatherapy product intended for personal delivery in clinical settings. He emphasized safety and infection control concerns for clinical aromatherapy and said Little Seed and its hospital partners are testing supplier chemical disclosures and distribution methods before wider use.

No formal board or regulatory actions occurred in the podcast; the segment was a company profile and discussion of product development, partnership and commercialization. Penka directed listeners seeking more information or institutional interest to littleseed.io and offered to facilitate conversations with hospitals that might consider the technology.

Looking ahead: Penka said Little Seed will focus first on fulfilling existing clinical commitments and then explore additional use cases such as dental procedures, inhalation therapies and meditative treatments for anxiety reduction.