Mimerse - Self help VR therapy platform
Innovating mental health therapy though virtual reality
Solution Summary
Around the world, hundreds of millions of people struggle with untreated mental illness. With an innovative virtual reality (VR) platform, Mimerse increases access to treatment by enabling anyone, anywhere to self-administer psychological therapies.
With Mimerse, users can progress at their own rate as they tackle phobias or other mental health related disorders. Through evidence-based psychological treatments, the platform uses virtual reality applications to teach users how to think, feel, and behave more constructively.
Market Opportunity
- Over 75 percent of people who meet the criteria for depression go untreated.
- VR technology can scale treatment to reach people regardless of where they live.
Highlights
- First automated VR cognitive-based therapy successfully tested in a randomized controlled trial
- 42,000 downloads on Samsung Gear VR platform
Organization Goals
- Develop and test three new treatment modules for pain distraction, relaxation, anxiety, and phobias in clinical trials
- Release treatment platforms in business and consumer markets
Existing Partnerships
Mimerse currently partners with:
- Swedish pharmacy chain Apotek Hjärtat to create painkiller alternatives
- Device partners: Samsung, Oculus, HTC
- The Swedish Government for funding
- Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University for research support
- Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Stockholm South General Hospital, and Apotek Hjärtat for distribution
Partnership Goals
Mimerse seeks partners to:
- Run clinical trials to further validate efficacy
- Expand user base through distribution with health organizations
- Advise development of new mental health products
- Pre-Seed
A virtual reality platform for mental health that allows anyone, anywhere, to self-administer evidence based psychological therapies. Our platform is composed of different scientifically evaluated interventions ranging from distracting, relaxing, cheerful or distressing (exposure therapy) all while teaching users how to think, feel, and behave more constructively.
Mental health problems are growing and hundreds of millions struggle with untreated mental illnesses. More than two-thirds of adult sufferers never receive treatment due a complete failure of recognising and putting resources into solving the problem. Although existing solutions (e.g. CBT counseling) work as effective treatment, they are expensive, inaccessible and inherently not scalable due to the lack of mental health professionals globally.
In order to help the hundreds of millions that need help, mental health treatments need to be automatic and self administered.
Virtual reality technology grants mental health providers power to simulate any environment or situation enabling a new era of evidence based psychological therapies.
VR will become part of peoples daily life, and in the future receiving treatment will be a matter of downloading a self help application.
Mimerse has the right combination of skills: world class game developers, world class clinical psychology research and knowledge and experience in building automated VR treatments.
As our solution is automated, it will be an important factor of solving the inherent scalability problem with psychological treatments today - i.e. the Mental Health Treatment Gap.
Before mainstream adoption of VR, a large userbase will be clinicians offering our treatments to their patients and clients.
After mainstream adoption of VR people will download Mimerse as an app, same place as where they get other VR content, and upon opening the application users will select from one or several things/symptoms they want to work on.
Published papers - Clinical trial results
Track downloads in the app store - 100.000 downloads of first demo
Financial model - B2B revenue
- Adult
- High-income economies
- Upper middle income economies (between $3976 and $12275 GNI)
- Non-binary
- Urban
- Europe and Central Asia
- US and Canada
- Consumer-facing software (mobile applications, cloud services)
- Digital systems (machine learning, control systems, big data)
- Something so new it doesn’t have a name
We are committed and focused on self administered, evidence-based direct to consumer VR treatments. We are unique in that we have the worlds first randomized controlled trial of such an application. Going forward we will be unique by not have different apps but collecting all treatments in one platform, one app.
We have unique clinical partnerships with Sweden's largest hospitals, best universities and specialist clinics as well as collaborations hardware manufacturers.
We will stand out in that we have design and production standards on par with modern games.
Development of our treatments involve the relevant patient groups and mental health professionals from day one. First we test with prototypes to measure reactions and feedback and to generate ideas and insights of how they themselves would like to use the technology. Then we use a larger sample of the same patient group for the clinical trials and end up with a product that is used directly at ease and benefit from that group of individuals.
Scientifically evaluating what effect our technology has on the user is a core value for us at Mimerse.
Mimerse will be deployed as a download in VR-app stores and mediated through companies like Facebook, Google and Samsung.
As time progresses and VR penetration deepens, adoption is likely to follow that of the smartphone in terms of demographics.
Until VR/AR is commonplace people will be able to access our solutions through clinicians and other stakeholders in mental health who supply the VR headset to the user.
- 4-5 (Prototyping)
- For-Profit
- Sweden
Venture capital, soft funding and income from app sales and publishing deals.
- Lack of funding
- Small (but rapidly growing) VR userbase
- Clinical data publication time lag
- 3 years
- 6-12 months
- 3-6 months
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuwuLksA9Vj_OArdbSrTFykKuijtaF522
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28270059
- Behavioral / Mental Health
- General Wellness
- Digital Health
Network
Clinical collaborators
Commercial collaborators
Stamp of approval
Samsung
Cerner
Karolinska Institutet
Stockholm University
Sahlgrenska University Hospital
Stockholm South General Hospital
Apotek Hjärtat (Swedish chain of pharmacies)
Stockholm center for eating disorders (SCÄ)
AppliedVR, Cognitive Leap, Oncomfort, Virtualret, Psious, Beyond Care, Firsthand Technology
Solver Team
Organization Type:
For profit
Headquarters:
Stockholm, Sweden
Company Stage:
Prototype
Working in:
Europe
Employees:
2
Website:
https://mimerse.com/
Co-founder
CEO