Chris Brickler: MyndVR’s Immersive VR Content for Older Adults
Chris Brickler, CEO and Co-Founder of MyndVR, speaks with Jessica Hagen and Faaizah Arshad about virtual reality content and its therapeutic benefits for senior adults and Veterans.
The following is a transcript of the episode:
BIO
Chris Brickler is the CEO and cofounder of MyndVR, which offers virtual reality digital therapeutics for seniors, with the aim to improve the cognitive health and wellness of the aging population. Over his career, Chris has managed large business units at Verizon, British Telecom, Concert, and Guidespark and has served on the boards of a NASDAQ company and several non-profits. His production group in Los Angeles, Xlantic.com, created an artistic, multi-platform video program around love and relationships that was nominated for an Emmy. His VR platform MyndVR, which creates VR content and original programming designed for both recreational and therapeutic effects, has been used in long-term care communities and veterans homes, by home healthcare providers, and by seniors “aging in place”.
Jessica Hagen
Hello and welcome back to Psychiatry XR. I'm your host, Jessica Hagen. I'm joined by my co-host Faaizah Arshad.
Faaizah Arshad
Hi Jessica. Really glad to be here today!
Jessica Hagen
We are also happy to be joined today by Chris Brickler, CEO and Co-Founder of MyndVR, which offers virtual reality digital therapeutics for seniors with the aim to improve the cognitive health and wellness of the aging population. Chrishas managed large business units at Verizon, British Telecom, Concert, and Guidespark and has served on the boards of a NASDAQ company and several non-profits. His production group in Los Angeles, Xlantic.com, created an artistic, multi-platform video program around love and relationships that was nominated for an Emmy. His VR platform MyndVR has been used in long term care communities and Veterans homes, by home health care providers and by seniors “aging in place.” The company creates VR content and original programming designed for both recreational and therapeutic effects. Chris, thank you so much for joining us.
Chris Brickler
Thank you, Jessica. It's great to be here! And nice to meet you, Faaizah.
Jessica Hagen
So, I gave a quick overview of MyndVR. Can you give our listeners a bit more details about the platform and how it's used? And then what are your thoughts on research and MyndVR’s history and future?
Chris Brickler
Right? Well, the platform is a really exciting development. So, over the past six years at MyndVR, we've been pioneering this concept, this idea, that VR could be essentially reimagined from a video game iconic status, that we see with Facebook and Meta Quest, to a health care product and to something that can actually be integrated into the fabric of healthcare. And what we looked at six years ago was: What's one of the more vulnerable populations that we all have a big space in our heart for? And that's our elderly population, our aging population. And when you start to look at that population group and see the growth that we're going to see over the next 10 years, it's really staggering. And what's really staggering is the impact it's going to have on our health care resources. So, we're on a mission at MyndVR to really build this platform that's highly scalable, can reach millions of older adults, and provide immersive content and technology that we're finding out just has so many different impacts across the continuum of care. And when we think about the aging process, and when we think about inserting virtual reality into that aging process, it can create so many different outcomes that we're uncovering. I guess that's where it gets really exciting, Jessica, is when you start to think about those improvements in people's behaviors, those improvements in people's outcomes. Then you start to put the clinical evidence strategy in place behind that to start really getting, you know, large sample sizes of older adults using VR and really documenting how this is changing their lives. And that's kind of where we're at right now, Jessica. It's a very exciting future. But we've also been working on this for six years to really make this ready for the masses in America.
Jessica Hagen
And how is the immersive content really geared towards seniors? And how is it used in the population specifically, in regard to psychiatric care and mental health?
Chris Brickler
Well, right. When we look at mental health, we look at this as a crisis across all ages, obviously. But when we look at senior isolation, in particular, and we look at what's happened with the pandemic, our seniors have really, really gone through a lot in the last three years. And we have a big place in our heart for that. And we think that based on all the work we've been doing at MyndVR, we think that we can really help move the needle on behavioral health, and also some of the aspects of clinical health as well. So now MyndVR is being used in all sorts of different research projects from the VA, to Stanford, very large sample sizes, and very specific indications that we're starting to look at as it relates to the health spectrum. So, it's very exciting time. But the future of research in this space is going to be very exciting, I would say over the next three or four years.
Jessica Hagen
And how is that content really specific to the older population? How does it really help engage them within the VR setting?
Chris Brickler
Well, what we found with VR is that we can make their window to the world bigger, we can make their minds and bodies healthier, their experience with aging happier. And we're doing this through the clinical deployment of these immersive technologies. So, when you think about video games in VR, or experiences that are generally designed for a younger audience, those are not the types of content modules that we put in front of seniors. We design and license content that we know have specific interventions to help with different health outcomes. So, when you look across the continuum of care in the senior space, you look at things like independent living, you look at senior living, you look at memory care, you look at assisted living, skilled nursing, Veterans care, a lot of different areas where healthcare can touch and help that older adult. And those are the areas that we're looking at and we are deploying MyndVR into today— largely as an over the counter digital therapeutic, but certainly in the future with all the tailwinds that are happening on the research front and the legislation front, we're very excited about the potential of prescriptive therapeutics as it relates to VR.
Jessica Hagen
So, what needs to change for virtual reality to be more readily accessible to psychiatrists or mental health professionals focusing on the older population who want to use this technology?
Chris Brickler
Yeah, so there's a lot of things that are happening development wise in the technologies that are going to be very important to mass adoption of VR as it relates to healthcare. We have a partnership established with HTC Vive, one of the world's leading VR companies. And in that partnership, we're ushering in the lightest weight, most ergonomically fit product for older adults. This is a radical shift in where we've come from. Most people associate VR with these larger headsets that completely take over your head. They've got straps over your head. When you think about trying to help somebody in dementia care, and bringing in an apparatus like that it is just a non-starter. It just does not work.
Jessica Hagen
It's so funny you're mentioning this because I have this idea in my head, like how heavy virtual reality headsets are for—
Chris Brickler
Right.
Jessica Hagen
The older population.
Chris Brickler
Right. So, what's exciting about this partnership is that we're ushering in a lightweight set of immersive glasses. Essentially, it weighs about a third of the weight of the commercial products that are on the field today for gaming. That's really important. When we think about the senior care space, we think about things that are easy. This is a population that has adopted FM radio, color television, personal computers, the internet, social media, smartphones, and now are starting to adopt VR. But they will adopt VR, only when it is geared and designed for them. And that's what MyndVR is doing. We're looking at this holistically from an ergonomics point of view. We're looking at this from a content point of view. What types of content can we bring into the care plan that might help with physical therapy or occupational therapy or speech and language therapy? We have a ton of content on our platform that ties into music therapy. So, I have a personal affinity with music and have been producing music for a long time. When I saw what can happen as it relates to mental health and cognitive health, music can play such an interesting play in that. And when we bring music into the immersive space, like we're doing at MyndVR becomes very exciting. So, we can bring live classical, intimate concerts to folks. So, we're now tapping into known science that we know how brain science and music work, especially in dementia care. But now we take that to a whole other level of impact when we add immersive technology. So no longer are we saying, “Hey, here's a customized playlist on an iPod that might have “Fly Me to the Moon” with Frank Sinatra, right?” Now we can actually create an environment where that senior that might have dementia is actually given a night out. And they go to a live Speakeasy film with 30 people all dressed in 50s garb, a live band playing “Fly Me to the Moon”, a martini glass on the table right in front of the spherical camera that captures the energy and spirit of the entire room. You put that into a production. And now you allow that senior to have not only a connection with those melodies that are so important in the neuro pathway process, but also a connection with the social aspects of remembering what it was like to be in a live music scenario. They obviously have less mobility in this part of their life. But now we have VR that can bring that world to them. And that's really where it starts with MyndVR is we try to bring that outside world to the seniors, and apply that across all sorts of different content, whether that's music related content, or nature immersion type of content. It's limitless on the types of content we can bring in. But what we have to do is bring it in with a lot of love, care, and compassion as it relates to the seniors. Because it is a new technology. And it's a very powerful technology. And if it's not done with the highest level of integrity, that experience that that senior might have, might not ever inspire them to do a virtual reality session again. So, we have to ease our way in this and we've got a model at MyndVR where we do ease our way into this with light content, but content that can help with reminiscence therapy. And Memory Care is a big use case that we see often with our operator partners. It's just a very exciting timeline here that we are on.
Faaizah Arshad
So, by creating the lightweight device, you're making the technology more safe and feasible for older adults, and then the varied content is very engaging for them. Do you find though that there's a learning threshold, or a barrier in training older adults to learn how to use the VR in the first place before they're able to access the content.
Chris Brickler
So, what we do at MyndVR is we provide a care tablet that is a direct control tablet with the VR headsets. So, when we get into care settings, like a dementia care setting, oftentimes, they might not have the cognitive skills required to navigate a VR menu system as easy as we might think it is. So, we allow the caregivers full access to guide those journeys to have conversations with that senior. So if we want to take that senior to the high school that they graduated, or take them to the chapel they got married, or where they spent their honeymoon or anything that special in their lives, if we can get that information from the senior to the caregiver, we can plug that into the care tablet and immediately have that senior right in front of their high school. From an intentional point of view, when you see that technology and use, you start to see neural pathways firing that we're not necessarily firing in the morning. So, the technology is just got so much promise. And I think one of the things as an industry, we all have the opportunity is to really hone in what those types of contents are, what the research is, what are the endpoints that we want to get to in these different fields, and then start getting very serious about those clinical research designs.
Jessica Hagen
So what kind of reception have you received from older adults who are using this new emerging technology?
Chris Brickler
Yeah, just overwhelming feelings of joy. What this content can do and the wonderment of the medium is so exceptional. It's like nothing we've ever seen before. So, we see a really wonderful appetite for these older adults that have become less mobile and many times, cognitively impaired. When you bring this technology and you bring the world to this person, their four walls become a different place, right? And we can teleport them in time, space, feelings, emotion. And it just becomes a way that they can rekindle relationships and connections with energies in their lives that they've lost touch with a little bit. So, when we take people to Paris, or if we allow them to connect with family members and go to the Grand Canyon together, there's just a lot of ways that we can use the content to really warm people up to the idea of this medium, and then quietly, start engineering and designing the content to where it has a positive impact on these folks. And that could be as simple as creating joy in their lives, which we all know that laughter and joy can be sometimes the best medicine. But then when we start thinking about other levels of acuity, and we get into occupational therapies and physical therapies, what we really are seeing is that this is making therapy fun, right? Sometimes physical therapy isn't the most fun thing, and sometimes people aren't very motivated to do that. But if we can bring them into a room that's a traditional therapy room at a long term care community, and we can turn that therapy room into the therapy room of the future— it can turn into a garden or a tool shed, or kitchen, or a beautiful meadow where they can catch butterflies, and oh, by the way, we're going to pattern the flight paths of the butterflies in ways that help with shoulder recoveries, specific PNF coordinates that are associated with PT— that's when you start to see VR getting really excited and integrating its way into healthcare in all sorts of different paths. But making therapy fun, I think is one of the things that's going to drive VR and more mass adoption over time.
Jessica Hagen
Yeah, absolutely. And then help seniors be able to heal a little bit faster too if they want to do it.
Chris Brickler
That's right. Yep. It's very much a motivating tool that we're seeing in the world of therapy.
Faaizah Arshad
One thing I'm curious to know is if you have performance metrics that can measure attention or evaluate how well VR technology is helping to improve cognition, memory, mood, or any of that and older adults.
Chris Brickler
Yeah, you know, I don't want to steal anybody's thunder on some very specific research that we're doing. I think the gaming engine that essentially drives virtual reality is well suited for creating tools and content that can help with cognition.
Faaizah Arshad
So, I know how we've talked a little bit about making sure that the technology is lightweight and engaging. Can you talk a little bit about the development process of creating the technology and how it's constantly improved to take in the need of older adults?
Chris Brickler
Sure, yeah. Well, at MyndVR, we definitely pride ourselves on being a content company. Yes, we are leveraging one of the most fascinating technologies to come on to our field, which is VR. And combining that with VR is now AI. So, we have a studio division called MyndVR studios. And what we do is develop content that we know is going to have an impact in certain areas. For instance, we're able to do live music performances for memory care residents at long term care, to help them socialize and sing along with a group of people in a VR sort of environment. So, you can create these virtual choir situations that you definitely feel like you're learning a new song. You're trying to remember the lyrics in the song. We provide cues in the space. So, we leverage the gaming engine to provide cues in the space for where that person needs to participate and not. The wonderful thing about the technology is you can start to measure all of those performance metrics with that person in terms of how they are reacting to the content. And then the beautiful aspect of the medium is then you can start creating dynamic experiences in virtual reality based on a feedback loop that you can ascertain from the technology. So, it's really embryonic at this point, but it's, the future is so bright in that area. And certainly when you start thinking about AI, and how that will drive personalization of care in the future, and when you sort of parlay that against this impending crisis of aging care, based on the sheer numbers of people moving into older years, we're going to have to have quantum technologies like MyndVR that can really be assistive in this healthcare fabric of the future.
Jessica Hagen
So, you said that you have MyndVR Studios. Do you actually put on live performances at MyndVR Studios and record those for your virtual reality performances?
Chris Brickler
Yes. At MyndVR Studios, we produce content across a lot of different genres. Live music is really important because we feel that seniors have a very deep connection with types of music. So we produce music across Ragtime to Jazz to Rock to Folk, and we try to hit all those interests in our music library. We also will produce content. We have an original series on the network called Route 66: A road to Remember. And this is a 10-part series that we started in Chicago filmed all the way along the journey to Santa Monica Pier. Every iconic spot along the way is captured. And now that a senior… if you're maybe 85 years old, and might be suffering from cognitive impairment, and you go on this journey on MyndVR, there's a strong likelihood that older memories will unlock themselves. And this creates a lot of conversation with caregivers that sometimes don't see much communication from these folks. Now, if you're an 85 year old senior, and let's say you don't have cognitive impairment, but you're less mobile, and you'll never be able to do that trip. Well, we've got content that's there for you to actually do that trip and feel like you're doing that. So, there's a range of content. I would say there's two kind of categories that we look at at MyndVR. One is kind of lean back content. So the Road to Remember content would be lean back— don't have to interact with it, I’m guided on the journey. And that is really acceptable for a large percentage of this population. Where we are also developing content at MyndVR Studios is in specific use cases around occupational therapy. So we have a partnership with Select Rehabilitation, one of the largest contract therapy companies in all of senior care… 10s of 1000s of therapists that they employ to take care of hundreds of 1000s of seniors every day. The two companies have partnered to develop a really special portfolio of advanced therapeutics using VR to help in the process of occupational therapies. And I'm very excited about that because it's very intentional, but it kind of plays into what our skills are at MyndVR in terms of developing content that can really help to move the needle across all these different indications that we face an aging.
Jessica Hagen
So earlier this year, MyndVR came out and announced that they will be covered by New York insurer AgeWell, and AgeWell New York's CareWell members will have access to MyndVR. Will psychiatrists be able to get a lot of benefit out of that?
Chris Brickler
Well, that's one beginning avenue that we're experiencing at MyndVR. So we're sort of a leader in the space in terms of driving awareness at the legislative level, also at the regulatory level as well. So that deal that we did with AgeWell, that was approved as really the first VR product ever to be approved by CMS as a supplemental benefit in a Medicare Advantage plan. Very exciting for the industry, big step forward, in terms of building more awareness for how important these therapies are going to become. It is a new science, it's a new field. So, there is a learning curve. But I think that your audience will certainly benefit from this technology over the years to come. There is some legislation in DC that's very promising that we're supporting right now. It's called the Access to Prescription Digital Therapeutics Act, bipartisan support… really encouraged to see how much bipartisan support there is. Intentions of this Act are to fast track things like MyndVR through FDA, through CMS, so we can move these necessary therapies that are highly scalable, cost effective. The savings that our healthcare system is going to see with these types of quantum technologies is incredible. And that's why it's a bipartisan effort here to move this along. So, we're extremely excited about that. I think that’ll have you know, over the next couple of years, that'll have big impact as it relates to your community, being able to track the effectiveness of these therapies in the psychiatric care world.
Faaizah Arshad
So, you've mentioned that MyndVR has deployed the VR technology to therapists and that it's been scaled to nursing facilities across the US. Is it only in the US? Or has it also gone global to other countries? Do you have a plan to expand it out? Further?
Chris Brickler
Yeah, we see the aging epidemic not just a US problem. We see this problem in most Western countries. And yes, MyndVR is widely available in Canada. It's also available in Australia and the UK now. So, we're excited about the product and the platform being accessible to other parts of the globe, where they are experiencing the exact same problems that we are here.
Faaizah Arshad
I know that you're also collaborating with Stanford to study more research on VR technology. Can you maybe speak about how that collaboration has benefited MyndVR and what you're learning and who you're working with?
Chris Brickler
Yeah, we've been really thrilled and excited to be working with Dr. Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford, part of the Human Virtual Reality Interaction Lab. They are just doing groundbreaking work. And they approached us about a year and a half ago about doing a study. We got together sort of figured out what endpoints make sense. And I think one thing that was slightly attractive to MyndVR is the fact that we are deployed, and our reach and our touch with so many seniors on our network is attractive to researchers. So, what we've done with Stanford and Jeremy's team is actually we've just finalized this, but it's the largest study that's ever been done in VR and aging: over 250 samples are being reported into the data. And it's really amazing what they're finding. Not only from the aspect of what VR is doing to improve the life of that senior that they get into, but also the relationship between the caregiver and that senior. And that's something that I think is really groundbreaking about this study because we've seen it over and over where VR can stimulate such a conversation between caregivers and the older adults. And a lot of times in these situations, these caregivers are not always consistent. So that older adult might have a new caregiver, you know, three months down the road, or six months or whatever. And it's important that those caregivers and those seniors get to know each other quickly. And we're seeing VR is really having a big impact in that area.
Jessica Hagen
Well, we look forward to having you back on when you're ready to announce all of the results from the research.
Chris Brickler
Well, I'll let Jeremy lead that effort. But we're just excited and thrilled to be working with Jeremy and his team. It’s an honor for sure. We're also working with the VA at the International VR Healthcare Association 2023, our global symposium. It's a really great organization of great people around the world. We did this in early March at Penn in Philly. And they shared some data that… their preliminary data around MyndVR, and I'll let them kind of go into what that will be once they ready to publish that. But suffice to say, this study is really important as it relates to outcomes relative to pain and anxiety and cognitive impairment that face so many of our Veterans. We have such enormous respect, and we're honored to be working with the VA on this level, because we see ourselves as having a product that can really help in the health of Veterans. And that's a big passion of ours as well. And we are just in the middle of deploying to 50 state Veteran homes right now across the country, through a partnership with a very large charity organization that wanted to bring recreational therapy in the form of MyndVR to all these Veterans that are in these state-run homes. And that's a very exciting project for us. So, you know, when you think about MyndVR are a recreational therapy, that's a great building block, because we know once you have the headsets and the apparatus in the community, then there's going to be more immersive digital therapeutics that will be made available. What we want to do at MyndVR is make sure that we can make those available to those seniors and to those Veterans. So our work with VA is really important, and they're doing wonderful research and I'll again defer to them to explain the data and the clinical aspects, but it's very exciting what they presented at the International VR Healthcare Association in March of this year.
Jessica Hagen
Yes, the VA has always been very forward thinking when it comes to emerging technologies. Absolutely. So how do you see VR technology evolving in the next 20 years or so. What are your hopes for the future of immersive technology?
Chris Brickler
Well, I think that first of all, I think VR will become ubiquitous, just as our large screens. Every room in the house, a lot of times, will have large screens, small screens, and tablets. I think that these screens will be ubiquitous over time. And as it relates to the older audience, I think that there will be an adoption that nears ubiquity as well, with older adults. It will be in a different form factor than what 25-year-old gamers want. That's for sure. But there will be immersive glasses that will help through augmented reality applications, VR applications. The future is extremely bright on that level. So, the smaller we can make the screens, the more comfortable we can make these screens, and the more content that we can apply specifically and designed for this aging population, that's where our future is at. And then I think when you start adding in elements and components like AI, it changes the landscape of what our tool set is going to look like in the future. So, when we think about assistive care, and senior care, and we think about the sheer lack of resources that are going to be mapped into what it takes to care for this huge population, then we get into things like, you know, “How can VR provide AI assisted health care? How can we have regular check ins with people? How can we test their emotional stability through AI?” And a lot of ways that we can use data in the space as well to help with diagnostics. You know, it's just it's such a bright future when you think about VR and healthcare. But you know, we're really committed to this aging population, and really making a difference here. It's a niche, but it's a very big niche, and it's a very important niche.
Jessica Hagen
Absolutely. Chris, thank you so much for your time and your insight into this topic. And we really appreciate you being here!
Chris Brickler
Well, thank you so much, Jessica. And thank you, Faaizah.
Faaizah Arshad
Thank you, Chris.
Jessica Hagen
That's it. For this episode of Psychiatry XR. We hope you gained a new perspective on using extended reality in healthcare and thanks for listening. This episode was brought to you by Psychiatry XR, the psychiatry podcast about immersive technology in mental health. For more information about psychiatry XR, visit our website at psychiatryxr.com. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and tune in again next month to hear from another guest about XR use in psychiatric care. You can join us monthly on Apple Podcast, Twitter, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Psychiatry XR was produced by Dr. Kim Bullock, Faaizah Arshad, and myself Jessica Hagen. Please note this podcast is distinct from Dr. Bullock's clinical teaching and research roles at Stanford University. The information provided is not medical advice and should not be considered or taken as a replacement for medical advice. This episode was edited by David Bell and music and audio was produced by Austin Hagen. See you next time.