Q&A: Utilizing biofeedback to switch immersive experiences in real-time

Healium, which gives reactive digital and augmented actuality experiences that regulate based on neurofeedback from a person’s physique, acquired $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 whenever you watch issues in your social feed otherwise you watch issues on the information and it will possibly enhance your coronary heart fee, equally, media can even heal by downshifting your nervous system.

There are completely different sorts of wearables that [Healium] use. We now have two appropriate 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 software, a pacer if you’ll. So it is detecting your mind patterns related to centered calm. And in these experiences, your thoughts is definitely controlling a firefly or it is perhaps an aura round you that turns from a yellow colour to blue in case you decrease your stress. So the media is reacting and responding to you and your personal physiology.  

Or, in augmented actuality, simply in your cellular system, you may pair your Apple Watch and you should use your coronary heart fee to lighten the photo voltaic system. And in case your coronary heart fee is simply too excessive, the suggestions is that the photo voltaic system darkens as light suggestions to you to extend your respiration 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 partaking than audio and even 2D interventions.  

Past Healium’s content material, our core know-how means that you can generate, modify and suggest XR content material to the person on the premise of EEG, coronary heart fee, pores and skin conductance, blood strain, and many others. Essential instruments in generative AI.

MHN: What are its use instances in healthcare, and the way are you working with Mayo Clinic?

Hill: Mayo Clinic has a know-how license and is without doubt one of 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 anxious scenario. You are truly someplace else. And that is the purpose of Healium – to offer 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 be offered into colleges, the army; elite athletes are utilizing Healium as properly. 

We lately gained the NFL Gamers Affiliation pitch competitors. And we had been in Phoenix within the lead-up into the Tremendous Bowl, sharing Healium with elite athletes there. , 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’ll be taught to self-regulate.

MHN: There’s a chair one sits in in the course of the Healium expertise. Do you want the chair?

Hill: The chair is elective, however we’re a giant fan of the chair. It is referred to as a Revibe Chair, they usually’re one among 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 among our companions referred to as OVR Know-how, which is a wearable that has built-in into Healium in order that when you’re going via these experiences, you may truly scent what it appears to be like like, which is fascinating to us. So we’re rooting for the oldsters 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 the rest you needed so as to add?

Hill: We now have a free program for veterans referred to as Honor All over the place that gives them free digital excursions to the World Warfare II, Vietnam, Korean or Girls’s Memorials. So, if of an ageing World Warfare II or a terminally sick veteran, inform them about that free app. It is obtainable on most standalone VR headsets.