Startup Playhouse MD Wants To Add Power Of Play To Kids’ Healthcare

An award-winning toy creator and a doctor have teamed up to launch a new company that manufactures products designed to make health care less scary for little kids, and less stressful for parents.

The company, Playhouse MD, is the brain child of Sydney Wiseman, a toy industry star credited with creating the hit toy Fingerlings, and her sister, Kaitlin Wiseman, a family practice doctor specializing in childcare, and mom of two children, ages 1 and 3.

While Playhouse MD, as a medical devices company, is a very different arena than the toy industry, Sydney Wiseman’s track record in toys has investors and retail partners betting her new venture will be a success.

From Fingerlings to Founding A Healthcare Brand

Fingerlings, released in 2017 by toy manufacturer WowWee, are small robotic figures, originally styled to resemble monkeys tiny enough to wrap their arms around a finger. The dolls responded to touch and made dozens of cute sounds when children interacted with them.

Wiseman, then 28, and a brand manager for WowWee, which is owned by her uncles, got the idea for Fingerlings after seeing a picture of a tiny marmoset monkey that was going viral on social media. She oversaw the development of the toy and the marketing campaign that made the toy a hit, and earned her a reputation as a toy industry wunderkind.

WowWee sold 100,000 Fingerlings the first week they were released, the toys sold out everywhere, Fingerlings tied for Toy of the Year honors from the Toy Association, and Sydney Wiseman was named Toy Inventor/Creator of the Year by the Women in Toys organization.

Since Fingerlings, Wiseman helped create a number of other innovative toys for WowWee.

She left WowWee in early 2024 to explore an idea that she and her sister had hatched at a family dinner.

Her sister, Kaitlin Wiseman, often looked for ways to make office checkups and procedures less scary for the young children she treated, and would attach a Fingerling doll to her stethoscope to make kids feel at ease, and to use the Fingerling to demonstrate what she was about to do.

Over dinner, the sisters were talking about the lack of kid-friendlier medical devices for checkups. “We were saying ‘Why is no one doing this? Why is healthcare scary for kids.”

Sydney Wiseman volunteered to make her sister a rocket ship that would fit over her otoscope – a handheld device used to exam the ear canal and eardrum for signs of infection. And she asked Kaitlin to try using it, but to also present it to children with the following narrative: “Do you want the rocket ship to look for stars in your ears or do you want the otoscope to do it?”

Kaitlin Wiseman saw immediately that the more playful approach made kids happier and her job easier. She told her sister “Kids as young as 4 months old stopped crying. Older kids were like ‘do you see more stars in my left ear or in my right ear’,” Sydney Wiseman said.

Rocket Ships And Narwhals In The Medicine Cabinet

Those discussions led to the birth of Playhouse MD, which the sisters founded along with finance and startup veteran Michael Kamins, who is serving as chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Sydney Wiseman’s title in the new venture is Chief Play Officer and Kaitlin Wiseman is Chief Medical Officer.

The company website, which will be selling four Playhouse MD products direct to consumer, launched Monday.

The products also are expected to be available soon on baby registry site Babylist, and at 700 Target stores and on Amazon.com in September.

Products currently available for purchase on PlayhouseMD.com are medicine dispensers designed to look like a rocket ship and a butterfly, a light-up nasal aspirator that looks like an elephant, and a light-up nasal bulb that looks like a narwhal.

The items are priced between $16.99 and $19.99. A $44.99 three-in-one infrared thermometer that looks like a giraffe is expected to be available for purchase soon.

Each of the devices comes with a small, illustrated guide showing parents how they can use the devices playfully to keep children smiling while they are having their temperature taken, or their stuffy noses suctioned.

The guides are designed to incorporate the kinds of games and techniques pediatricians, family doctors, and creative parents use to distract young children from uncomfortable or unfamiliar medical procedures.

“To be able to put all the tips and the tricks that I use, that my friends use, and my colleagues use, into real play and to make it concrete” is very exciting, Kaitlin Wiseman said.

While Playhouse MD is trying to incorporate more play into infant and toddler healthcare, the founders are quick to note that their devices definitely are not toys, but medical devices that had to pass a long list of safety and FDA compliance guidelines.

Tapping A Kid-Centric Market Niche

While other companies are marketing child health care devices with the mom or parent’s tastes top of mind, the Playhouse MD founders believe they are the first to design products that are focused on what will make kids smile.

For competitors in the space, “their design focus is on the minimal millennial mother”,” CFO Michael Kamins said. “We decided to flip that around,” he said, and set out to “design a product that functions as good or work better than the competitors’, but the design is for the person on the receiving end of that product, the child, And that’s where we have the biggest competitive advantage,” Kamins said.

“We’re the only kid-centric healthcare brand on the market,” Sydney Wiseman said.

“And I think parents will find that they’ll end up having more fun” as well with “products that promote play as part of healthcare,” Kaitlin Wiseman said.

Support From Investors In Toy, Healthcare Fields

The company is not disclosing how much funding it has raised thus far, but it has an impressive list of investors with backgrounds in healthcare or toys. That list, according to a spokesperson for the company, includes Andrew Berman, co-founder of baby monitor brand Nanit, Adam Gillman, co-founder of Hiya Vitamins, Alan Hassenfeld, former chairman and CEO of Hasbro, and Geoffrey Greenberg, CEO of Just Play LLC. Venture capital firm Greycroft also is an investor.

Geoffrey Greenberg, in a statement provided by Playhouse MD, said Just Play is investing in Playhouse MD because “At Just Play, we’ve long championed the essential role of play in a child’s development, and we see that same dedication reflected in Playhouse MD.”

“By combining clinical expertise with the universal language of play, they’re transforming how children connect with and feel empowered by healthcare,” Greenberg said.

Playhouse MD is launching the products with a marketing campaign targeted at key social media influencers. It has already received an endorsement from one influential podcaster and social media personality in the kids health space, pediatrician Dr. Mona Amin. founder of the PedsDocTalk podcast and YouTube channel.

“As a pediatrician and mom, I’ve seen firsthand how fear can creep into a child’s health journey – and how play can flip the script. Playhouse MD is rewriting the story,” Amin said in a statement provided by Playhouse MD. “This isn’t just innovative – it’s the future of pediatric care,” she said.