Sister and brother imagine a way to help kids heal

Intermountain Catholic

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Deja and Canyon Viau created a way to help improve the recovery of young patients by decorating hospital rooms with bright images. The images also appear in veteran hospitals and assisted living centers. Courtesy photo/Mark Viau

LAYTON — Deja Viau and her brother Canyon Viau wanted to make the view better for young patients to help them heal, so they created a way to decorate hospital rooms with happy images. Deja and Canyon, along with their father Mark Viau, are the cofounders of ImagineitSkins.com. They are members of Saint Rose of Lima Parish.

The idea came about in 2009 when Mark Viau (pronounced view), started wearing a CPAP, a breathing apparatus worn while sleeping by people with sleep apnea. "He wears a CPAP because he snores and he looks like he’s wearing an F-16 pilot’s mask," said Deja, now an eighth-grader at Fairview Junior High School. "I wanted to decorate it so it would look better."

Deja was 11 and Canyon was 9 when the idea snowballed from decorating the CPAP into helping kids have a brighter environment while staying in the hospital. "I thought of kids in hospitals because they may be scared or depressed and might not know what is happening to them," said Deja. "I thought if they could look at friendly characters on the walls, that would make being in the hospital less scary for them."

The project became a family affair with their father’s help. "We got together with Advanced Graphics to come up with the right product that would stick to hospital walls," said Deja.

Mark found Advanced Graphics through the nonprofit organization Entrepreneur Launch Pad in Utah. "The material we use withstands the chemicals that hospitals use to cleanse the rooms after each patient," he said. "There are other people who dabble in graphics such as ours, but Deja’s and Canyon’s whole focus was kids in hospital rooms and nobody other than mural artists has done that. Our artwork is less expensive than a mural artist. A mural artist charges $50 a square foot and we charge $10 a square foot. It takes them three to eight days to paint a room and our artwork can be put up in less than an hour."

ImagineitSkins.com can also personalize a room for a patient who is in long-term care. "We can take a jpeg photo and transfer it into one of our images," said Mark. "The images are also appearing in veterans’ hospital rooms and assisted living and nursing homes."

Mark also came across two scientific studies, one from Australia and the other from Great Britain, that endorse the family’s idea. "The studies demonstrate how critical it is for both children and adults to have bright images in the room to help them heal faster while also having a better experience," said Mark.

A team of international artists provides original images for children and adults to ImagineitSkins; Deja and Canyon screen all the submitted artwork, Mark said, and both children have become accustomed to speaking with adults in meetings and during teleconferences.

Now 48 hospital rooms throughout the United States as well as Davis Hospital & Medical Center in Layton and Ogden Regional Medical Center have applied images through ImagineitSkins.com. As a result, on June 4 the Viau family received the Best of State Community Development Private Sector Individual Humanitarian Award at the Best of State Awards Gala in Salt Lake City. An article about their product also was published in the Small Business, Big Innovation section of the Aug. 29 "Wall Street Journal."

"Being a business owner at 12 is pretty cool," said Deja.

The Viau family is ready to go to market on their next patented project: Verta, an insert for students’ backpacks that helps distribute the weight evenly to protect a student’s back.

"The Verta has been tested by a mechanical engineer whose analysis is that the reduction of momentum force with the insert installed is 66 percent," said Mark.