Healium, which affords reactive digital and augmented actuality experiences that alter in accordance with neurofeedback from a person’s physique, obtained $3.6 million in seed funding earlier this 12 months and signed an settlement with Mayo Clinic for the event of immersive psychological well being and health experiences.
Sarah Hill, CEO of Healium, sat down with MobiHealthNews to debate the Missouri-based firm’s choices and its use case in healthcare.
MobiHealthNews: Are you able to inform me about Healium and the way the biofeedback facet works?
Sarah Hill: So, Healium is a digital drug, a non-harmful coping mechanism for psychological wellness and sleep, and it is simply utilizing immersive media in a therapeutic manner. And simply as media could be dangerous if you watch issues in your social feed otherwise you watch issues on the information and it will possibly improve your coronary heart fee, equally, media may also heal by downshifting your nervous system.
There are completely different sorts of wearables that [Healium] use. We have now two suitable wearables. One is an EEG meditation headband that is simply worn throughout the brow. It is not diagnostic in any manner. It is a self-awareness device, a pacer if you’ll. So it is detecting your mind patterns related to targeted calm. And in these experiences, your thoughts is definitely controlling a firefly or it is perhaps an aura round you that turns from a yellow coloration to blue if you happen to decrease your stress. So the media is reacting and responding to you and your personal physiology.
Or, in augmented actuality, simply in your cellular machine, you possibly can pair your Apple Watch and you need to use your coronary heart fee to lighten the photo voltaic system. And in case your coronary heart fee is just too excessive, the suggestions is that the photo voltaic system darkens as mild suggestions to you to extend your respiratory and attempt to decrease your coronary heart fee. So it is sort of like biofeedback/neurofeedback on steroids inside these immersive environments, the place the suggestions that you just get isn‚t only a quantity. It is not simply audio. It is really immersive media, which we all know in analysis that immersive media is extra memorable. It is extra participating than audio and even 2D interventions.
Past Healium’s content material, our core expertise permits you to generate, modify and advocate XR content material to the person on the premise of EEG, coronary heart fee, pores and skin conductance, blood stress, and many others. Vital instruments in generative AI.
MHN: What are its use circumstances in healthcare, and the way are you working with Mayo Clinic?
Hill: Mayo Clinic has a know-how license and is among the traders in our newest spherical.
Healium is utilized in areas of stress and for burnout. These are drugless escapes that may rapidly interrupt the stress response and rapidly downshift the nervous system and trick the mind into pondering that you just’re not in a tense state of affairs. You are really some other place. And that is the purpose of Healium – to supply drugless instruments that enable folks to really feel higher and be taught to self-regulate their mind patterns and their coronary heart fee. Healium can also be offered into faculties, the army; elite athletes are utilizing Healium as effectively.
We just lately gained the NFL Gamers Affiliation pitch competitors. And we have been in Phoenix within the lead-up into the Tremendous Bowl, sharing Healium with elite athletes there. You realize, that is the stress Olympics proper now, proper? And never everyone seems to be educated for it. And so these are simply instruments that enable them to see their emotions in order that they will be taught to self-regulate.
MHN: There’s a chair one sits in throughout the Healium expertise. Do you want the chair?
Hill: The chair is non-compulsory, however we’re a giant fan of the chair. It is known as a Revibe Chair, and so they’re one among our companions.
We like to mix Healium with vibration and tales. And we use a wide range of inputs, not simply vibration, or EEG or coronary heart fee. However we additionally use aroma. And there is one other one among our companions known as OVR Know-how, which is a wearable that has built-in into Healium in order that when you find yourself going via these experiences, you possibly can really odor what it appears to be like like, which is fascinating to us. So we’re rooting for the oldsters over at OVR as a result of we all know that integrating aroma has worth in storytelling and in immersion, and in rapidly downshifting the nervous system.
MHN: Is there the rest you needed so as to add?
Hill: We have now a free program for veterans known as Honor All over the place that gives them free digital excursions to the World Struggle II, Vietnam, Korean or Girls’s Memorials. So, if of an growing older World Struggle II or a terminally ailing veteran, inform them about that free app. It is accessible on most standalone VR headsets.
