Healium, which affords reactive digital and augmented actuality experiences that alter based on neurofeedback from a consumer’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 side 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 while you watch issues in your social feed otherwise you watch issues on the information and it might probably enhance your coronary heart fee, equally, media can even heal by downshifting your nervous system.

There are totally different sorts of wearables that [Healium] use. We now have 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 may be an aura round you that turns from a yellow coloration to blue for those who decrease your stress. So the media is reacting and responding to you and your individual physiology.  

Or, in augmented actuality, simply in your cellular system, you’ll be able to pair your Apple Watch and you should utilize 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 form of like biofeedback/neurofeedback on steroids inside these immersive environments, the place the suggestions that you simply get isn‘t only a quantity. It is not simply audio. It is truly 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 know-how permits you to generate, modify and suggest XR content material to the consumer on the idea of EEG, coronary heart fee, pores and skin conductance, blood stress, and so on. 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 buyers in our newest spherical. 

Healium is utilized in areas of stress and for burnout. These are drugless escapes that may shortly interrupt the stress response and shortly downshift the nervous system and trick the mind into considering that you simply’re not in a traumatic scenario. You are truly someplace else. And that is the aim of Healium – to supply drugless instruments that permit 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 navy; elite athletes are utilizing Healium as properly. 

We just lately won the NFL Players Association pitch competition. And we had 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 skilled for it. And so these are simply instruments that permit 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-obligatory, however we’re a giant fan of the chair. It is known as a Revibe Chair, and so they’re one in every of 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 in every of our partners known as OVR Expertise, which is a wearable that has built-in into Healium in order that if you end up going by way of these experiences, you’ll be able to truly scent what it appears to be like like, which is fascinating to us. So we’re rooting for the parents over at OVR as a result of we all know that integrating aroma has worth in storytelling and in immersion, and in shortly downshifting the nervous system.

MHN: Is there anything you wished so as to add?

Hill: We now have a free program for veterans known as Honor In all places that gives them free digital excursions to the World Battle II, Vietnam, Korean or Ladies’s Memorials. So, if you understand of an growing older World Battle II or a terminally sick veteran, inform them about that free app. It is obtainable on most standalone VR headsets.