MRI LEGO machine. Photo: LEGO Learning Through Play
A group of LEGO pros are hoping to build a less stressful environment for young hospital patients by creating brick miniatures of MRI scanners, Xray machines and waiting rooms so the real thing is not as scary.
The LEGO versions of the high-tech gear will go to hospitals in Southland and Otago.
LEGO put out hundreds of brick block replicas of hospital machinery about eight years ago, but there were snapped up and New Zealand didn't get a look in.
Now a South Island LEGO group has managed to get the "blueprints" and are building their own.
Secretary of the LUG South group, Gavin Evans told Checkpoint they were contacted by their local hospitals play specialist, who had seen the LEGO models online.
"They said 'hey, do you guys know anything about this?' Which we luckily did."
Evans said from there, sourcing the blueprints for the models was simple, thanks to his worldwide LEGO connections.
"I've got friends internationally who I contacted ... and one of them put up their hand and said, yes, I've got the blueprints."
Each model is made up of a couple hundred bricks but some of them, like the MRI machine, include rare pieces.
LUG South Group at the Christchurch Brick Show. Photo: Supplied
"They're not the easiest thing to source the parts for, but luckily we've got some real experts in finding those really hard to find bricks in our club."
The group sources the pieces from an online trading system for LEGO pieces used internationally.
"The hard-to-get pieces are the surround of the MRI machine, because they're in a quite a rare colour in the machine."
Evans said substituting the rare pieces was not a sacrifice the group were willing to make.
"We could transfer them to being a different colour ... but they look really nice."
LUG South operates as a charitable trust, putting on events across the South Island that raise money for sick children.
Their last LEGO show in Southland managed to raise enough money to also help them with funding the project.
"We had a prototype of the MRI machine there where we had donations from the public as well."
For some of the group, the connection to helping children in hospitals goes much deeper, one member beating cancer as a child himself.
"He had a real rough time when he was a kid, and that's really formed his whole way of looking at the world. He's very generous person who gives back to the community in every way he can because when he was needing that help when he was a child, that help was there for him."
The group hopes that the replicas will help other kids out during their time in hospital.
Evans said research that involved testing out the LEGO models in hospitals found that they had a huge benefit for children.
"When kids would play with the machine all of a sudden, instead of it being a terrifying foreign object it was something they were familiar with, that they understood."
"They were finding that kids that were actually calm and relaxed and understood the machine even needed less sedation or no sedation ... and from what we've been told, that is a really huge deal because it's not pleasant for a child."
Currently the models are still in the prototype stage, but group is working hard towards the final product.
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