EON Reality Denmark is collaborating with the children’s department of a hospital in Viborg, which will promote extensive use of Virtual Reality (VR) therapy for treating children with anxiety.

EON Reality is committed to digital, immersive transformation across a range of industries – including healthcare. Globally, the company has worked in this sector for 20 years.

The Denmark team is embarking on a voluntary mission to support a local children’s hospital, exploring the use of Virtual Reality (VR) as a use case for anti-anxiety treatment.

Good results with VR therapy

The children’s hospital has used VR therapy since the summer of 2018 in collaboration with KORAS and Rigshospitalet, and they have already seen it create a positive impact on several of the children who have tried it. As part of VR therapy, the children wear VR headsets and play VR games during procedures to help reduce the impact of pain and discomfort.

EON Reality’s EON-XR Platform is utilized across the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector for a number of companies including GSK and Novartis. Where there might be pre-existing content (such as interactive therapeutic materials), EON-XR and EON-XR can be deployed to make it accessible for patients on mobile phones, tablets, and in care centers.For some of the children, VR works amazingly in distracting the children from what is happening around them. For others, it gives them a feeling of losing control. The success of the experience also depends on whether or not the children are onboard beforehand.TRY OUT THE EON-XR PLATFORM FOR HEALTHCARE

EON Reality’s Denmark team will help the children’s hospital expand its range of VR games and experiences used for the therapy. It will provide additional ways for patients to cope better with their inpatient treatment and could help improve the outcome of an inpatient admission.

VR transports the children to an entirely different environment, thus removing the focus from the fact that they are in the hospital or in a ‘bad’ situation.

VR therapy requires training

Rigshospitalet has gained some valuable insight in the few months that they’ve been using VR therapy. By offering multiple VR experiences from EON Reality for each age group, the medical teams are excited about the possibility of soon having more to offer to children dealing with pain and anxiety.

Where VR is the best option, it will be provided as part of the inpatient experience as long as VR is already agreeable to the young patients.

The staff is excited about being able to offer the technology to their patients. Our collaboration understands what training hospital staff might require when delivering these VR experiences to their patients, which is an incredibly important aspect to take into account when considering VR for therapeutic use.

“We already have a range of activities that we use as part of our treatment, and VR is but one tool,” said Marianne Eg, Research Nurse. “However, for the children, who benefit from VR, it is a great tool in getting them distracted throughout the treatment.”

The future of VR in hospitals and healthcare

One thing is certain: VR will become more integrated in the healthcare industry in the future. The revolutionary work that is being done right now using VR therapy for rehabilitation, mental health conditions like anxiety, or for helping people with dementia is just the beginning.

By cooperating with the children’s hospital, EON Reality Denmark will be able to collect valuable insights in the field of VR therapy and develop its application in real-life mental health scenarios.

We already have a range of activities that we use as part of our treatment, and VR is but one tool. However, for the children, who benefit from VR, it is a great tool in getting them distracted throughout the treatment.

By entering this type of project, EON Reality will create a lot of attention towards the use of VR technology while also helping sick children. The next steps for this collaboration between EON Reality Denmark, KORAS and Rigshospitalet are to use VR therapy and software across other areas of their healthcare offering – including accessible home care and mobile application development, hinted at by additional psychological use cases.

EON-XR, EON Reality’s learner-centric application on the EON-XR platform, is an example of how VR and AR can be effectively used to facilitate accessible, visual learning with mental prompts from mobile phones.

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