Introduction
Due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual alternatives to in-person interactions are becoming the norm across education, healthcare, and business. In fact, 84% of medical practitioners offered virtual appointments in April 2021, and a majority intend to continue offering them. Virtual appointments help keep patients safer while also increasing inclusion and accessibility.
XRHealth is a virtual clinic that has created FDA-registered virtual reality (VR) applications to treat a variety of ailments and track patient progress. To date, the company offers three products: a VR headset, a mobile app, and a clinician portal. We reached out to founder, CEO, and director Eran Orr to learn more about the experiences that led to XRHealth and how the company values accessibility.
Note: This interview was conducted over phone and email. It has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What inspired you to take the leap and start XRHealth?
As an Air Force veteran pilot and virtual reality early adopter, after suffering from chronic neck pain caused by the heavy helmets used during flights, I saw a need to bring my VR expertise into healthcare. Based on my experience, I believed VR was the perfect tool for simulated training to maximize the effectiveness of physical therapy.
So I decided to embark on a new mission to help others recover from pain by using VR. XRHealth became the first company to combine a telehealth online clinic with gamified virtual reality facilitated by licensed therapists.
Who is on your team and how did you come together?
I teamed up with interdisciplinary experts, including medical professionals, data scientists, and graphic artists. They come from multiple backgrounds, including the gaming industry, healthcare organization, and army veterans executive officers.
How is XRHealth transforming the healthcare industry?
We are building therapy in the metaverse (the new term used to describe the virtual world). Our platform combines immersive VR and augmented reality (AR) technology with telehealth services, licensed clinicians, and advanced data analytics for an all-in-one innovative solution that lets patients receive high-quality care in the comfort of their homes via the metaverse.
We provide our patients with enjoyable treatments that feel like less work and more fun. Patients participate in weekly sessions with a licensed therapist who guides and monitors their treatment in real time and adjusts therapy protocols remotely in the VR/AR headset.
In between sessions, the patient practices virtual reality exercises according to the tailored VR digital treatment plan (in addition to conventional exercises that may be suggested). Patients use our mobile app to track their own progress, chat with their therapist, and communicate easily with clinic staff.
After each therapy session, the patient’s insurance company is billed for telehealth services and remote therapeutic monitoring (a newly introduced current procedural technology code now used to support the growth of digital therapeutics and foster the development of remote patient services).
What does the competitive landscape look like, and how do you differentiate?
XRHealth is the first company using VR-enabled telehealth. Why VR/AR?
- It’s immersive, engaging, and fun – drives significantly higher adherence to home exercise plans
- Enables full-body motor and cognitive training – fully fit for a multitude of chronic conditions
- Full patient immersion generates multiples of 100% objective data points per treatment session, allowing customization to each patient during the entire treatment plan
- Big data analytics per chronic condition treatment enables learning and potentially improving the current gold standard for current patient/drug clinical outcome
- 15x more data than mobile
How do you intend to use the money you raise this round to scale the business?
The funds will be used for clinic expansion and research and development for platform expansion.
What do you want potential investors to know about you and/or your company?
XRHealth is on the cusp of it’s full-scale national rollout and multiple digital therapeutics registrations. This current crowdfunding round will allow the company to gauge public opinion of its products and services while interacting with potential customers before proceeding to a full initial public offering. The company believes in accessibility to all, not only in its services but also in allowing the public to invest and take part from a very early stage. As such, the pre-seed round the company raised on inception (in 2016) used a crowdfunding platform as well.
As you think about the business 5-10 years down the road, what do you see exit opportunities looking like? Have you set any future goals for the company?
XRHealth will dominate the outpatient chronic conditions care market globally, serving tens of thousands of patients across multiple care verticals. Upon finalizing current clinical trials, XRHealth will register its medical VR/AR applications as digital therapeutics for multiple chronic conditions in three main therapeutic areas: pain management, neurological disorders, and psychiatry. Digital therapeutics – a subset of digital health – are evidence-based, drug-free therapeutic interventions driven by high-quality software programs to prevent, manage, or treat medical disorders or diseases. To date, the prevailing treatment for chronic conditions are medications. Medications can be addictive, are expensive, and are a source of multiple short- and long-term side effects. Digital therapeutics are addressing these challenges:
- Provide patients an engaging experience
- Are drug-free, i.e., safe for prescribing to all segments of the patient population
- Substantially lower payer costs (compared to pharmacology)
- Harnessing technology and data to provide better clinical outcomes
We look forward to seeing where Eran and his team take the company. XRHealth is currently raising on StartEngine.
