AppliedVR raises $29M to help make virtual reality the standard of care for treating chronic pain

Applied­VR Rais­es $29 Mil­lion for Immer­sive Head­sets (LA Busi­ness Journal):

Cen­tu­ry City-based Applied­VR, Inc. announced March 23 that it has raised $29 mil­lion in Series A fund­ing that will be used to con­tin­ue devel­op­ment of an immer­sive head­set to help patients with chron­ic pain.

… The com­pa­ny is build­ing a head­set called EaseVRx that will dis­play immer­sive envi­ron­ments like camp­fires, moun­tains and oth­er ani­mat­ed nature scenes to help patients deal­ing with chron­ic pain, includ­ing fibromyal­gia and chron­ic intractable low­er back pain…

Applied­VR Chief Exec­u­tive and co-founder Matthew Stoudt said that the pan­dem­ic has gen­er­at­ed more need for pain treat­ments that can be admin­is­tered away from med­ical settings.

The Announcement:

Applied­VR Secures $29 Mil­lion in Series A Fund­ing to Make Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty the Stan­dard of Care for Chron­ic Pain (press release):

Applied­VR pro­vides vir­tu­al real­i­ty-based treat­ments aimed at com­pre­hen­sive­ly treat­ing chron­ic pain. Com­bin­ing well-estab­lished cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­pies with mind­ful­ness exer­cis­es, the company’s EaseVRx solu­tion recent­ly became the first vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) pre­scrip­tion ther­a­peu­tic to receive Break­through Device Des­ig­na­tion from the FDA for treat­ment-resis­tant fibromyal­gia and chron­ic intractable low­er back pain. The com­pa­ny also just released results from its piv­otal eight-week ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­al, find­ing that the EaseVRx device pro­duced “clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful” improve­ment in mul­ti­ple pain out­comes, and had high par­tic­i­pant sat­is­fac­tion and engagement.

“Chron­ic pain is one of the most com­mon med­ical con­di­tions in the world, yet it still is incred­i­bly debil­i­tat­ing to patients, cost­ly to the sys­tem and com­plex to treat. While our mis­sion has always been to demon­strate that VR can be a pow­er­ful anal­gesic in any set­ting, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed a surge in demand for dig­i­tal med­i­cines like VR that can be deliv­ered safe­ly to patients in their own homes,” said Matthew Stoudt, co-founder and CEO of Applied­VR. “As a lead­ing evi­dence-backed VR ther­a­peu­tics provider in health­care, we’re com­mit­ted to mean­ing­ful­ly improv­ing the lives of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from chron­ic pain by mak­ing VR the stan­dard of care for treat­ing chron­ic pain in a provider-pre­scribed, pay­er-reim­bursed model.”

News in Context:

• The FDA clears Applied­VR head­set to help treat fibromyal­gia and chron­ic pain
• FDA clears Mind­Maze GO neu­rore­ha­bil­i­ta­tion plat­form, eas­ing access to con­tin­ued out­pa­tient therapy
• Vir­tu­al-real­i­ty gam­ing + afford­able biofeed­back = Anx­i­ety ther­a­py for all?
• Wash­ing­ton Wiz­ards to test vir­tu­al real­i­ty sys­tem to bet­ter mon­i­tor play­ers’ fatigue