Mimerse - Self help VR therapy platform

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

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.

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

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuwuLksA9Vj_OArdbSrTFykKuijtaF522

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28270059

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