Grantham Hospital's £15,000 toy 'Kitten Scanner' says it saved £150,000 in child sedation

In a September 2025 BBC report, Lincolnshire Community and Hospitals NHS group says a toy MRI scanner at Grantham District Hospital has saved £150,000 in sedation and care costs. The 'Kitten Scanner', bought for £15,000 by United Lincolnshire Hospitals Charity, is a miniature MRI machine in which young children pretend to scan toys.

Play leader Sandy Crook says staff know hospital visits can be daunting and that an MRI scanner is noisy and hard for patients to tolerate. She shows the children the toy device to play with and, when they are comfortable, takes them to the MRI unit. Afterwards they get a certificate.

Crook says the savings come from avoiding sedation, and the time and cost of a short ward stay to recover from a general anaesthetic.

Young children can find a real MRI frightening and noisy.

Sedation brings extra cost and recovery time.

Play lets staff prepare a child with their own toys before the scan.

Rehearsal can substitute for expensive clinical interventions: make the frightening experience familiar before the real thing.

Crook describes the scanner as overwhelmingly successful since it was bought two years earlier, and says more scanners could be purchased for other locations. The £150,000 figure comes from the health officials in the report, which gives no breakdown.