Virtual Reality For Dementia
At the same time that Alex was developing new apps for VR. He had two elderly neighbours, Stan and Dulcie. Who were 99 and 98 years old respectively.
For a long time, Stan and Dulcie were very active. Even walking into town every week to do their own food shopping.
But one day on their way back from the supermarket, Stan took a strange turn and couldn’t make it home.
They were stranded on the street for a while until a passer-by helped them the rest of the way.
This destroyed their confidence and they went from being active and outdoorsy, to never leaving the front room.
This went on for months.
Knowing how much they loved the outdoors, Alex decided to build a virtual reality experience that would enable them to go outdoors, to the beach, to the forest, without having to leave the comfort and security of their lounge.
It was a huge success. It was wonderful to see them experience the beach. They were thrilled and excited and it really lifted their mood and brought them a lot of joy.
Winning The International Award For VR In Healthcare
Alex quickly realised that he was onto something here and.He knew that this could not only lift the spirits of Stan and all see, it could lift the spirits and give a wonderful experience. Too many elderly people.People that were stuck in care homes around the UK.
Alex had a friend who happened to work at a care home so he phoned him and had quite a strange conversation with him, he said, “Can I please come and put a virtual reality headset on some of your old people please?”
Quite a strange request! But, luckily for Alex, his friend understood what he was trying to do and invited him up to the care home to share his virtual reality experience with some of their residents.
The friend’s care home was actually a specialist centre for people living with dementia. And at that time, Alex didn’t really know anything about dementia. He didn’t even realise that the people he was sharing his experience with had dementia.
But the virtual reality experience, the effect it had was incredible, so much so that the care home staff cried because these people who had been living with dementia for a long time. Who in many cases were very isolated. They didn’t talk, and certainly never expressed any happiness or joy.
All of a sudden, they were laughing, being very happy, and even recollecting old songs and experiences from many, many, many years before.
Traditionally dementia isn’t a condition that is treatable and there aren’t any remedies that can help.
But now, Alex’s virtual reality experiences were having a huge impact on the well-being of the residents of the care home.
This led Alex to partner with the care Home group that ran the care home. To co-develop a bespoke system in virtual reality, especially designed to help people living with dementia.
Immersicare Goes Viral
After several months of developing the new application. It was having a huge impact on the residents and so Alex asked some of the relatives of the residents if they would mind if they filmed them enjoying the experiences so that Alex could share what they were working on with the rest of the world.
And because they had seen such huge improvements in their relatives, they were more than happy to help in any way that they could to promote this project to help it to reach a wider audience to have a bigger impact on more people living with dementia.
So Alex filmed the residents and put it together into a short video which you can watch below. He then decided to post it on his own Facebook profile to show his friends to get some feedback before sharing it more publicly with the rest of the world.He wanted to know: did it resonate with people? Did it explain what the project was about? Did it convey the benefits that they residents were experiencing? Things like that.
Alex posted the video on his Facebook page late on a Wednesday evening.And then went to bed. Not realising that he’d actually set the privacy of the video to public rather than friends only.
He woke the next day.To see with some shock that the video had been shared over 10,000 times.With 10,000 comments.10s of thousands of likes. And it had been watched over 3,000,000 times.
The comments were full of amazing words such as, “This is incredible.”, “What an amazing thing to do for these people.”, “I wish we could get this for my Grandfather.”, “What can we do?”, “Where can we get it?”. Things like that. It was an incredibly emotional time for Alex. And quite surprising.
But not only where their comments from the general public, wishing they could access the technology. There were also a few comments from important people in the game development space. Microsoft, Sony, Valve, offering to help to support the project.
But there was one organisation that was missing from that list and that was Oculus. Now, Alex had tested various different headsets and had come to the conclusion that the only headset that would work for this project was the Oculus Rift because of its weight and because of how easy to use and set up it was.
Getting Facebook To Help
And in order for Alex to launch.The project commercially, he would need the support of Oculus to make that a reality.
Eventually, through some connections that had been built through the video becoming viral, Alex was finally introduced to the mobile development director at Facebook. A guy called Carlos. He was in charge of the UK arm of Oculus Rift development.
Alex eventually had a phone call with Carlos, and explained to him what he wanted to do with the project. And how he needed their help in order to achieve his goals.
Unfortunately, Carlos immediately replied with two pieces of bad news, “Number one.We don’t do commercial applications for the Oculus Rift. And two, we definitely don’t do healthcare. But we really love what you’re trying to do with the project, so we’ll send you 5 free Oculus Rifts. Good luck.
Alex immediately thanked Carlos for the kind donation. But said, “Thank you. But that’s not enough.We need you for this project. And I’m sorry, I can’t just give up that easily.”
“I understand.”, Carlos replied. “But here is the challenge that lies before us… If you wish to achieve the goal of releasing this commercially in the healthcare space.”
“Not only do we need to convince the board of Oculus. But for something of this magnitude, we actually need to convince the board of Facebook too, which includes Mark Zuckerberg.”
“It can be done. Maybe. But just understand, that’s a very long and difficult journey to achieve it.”
Alex replied, “I understand. Please can we try?
Carlos appreciated Alex’s tenacity and agreed to give it a shot.
A week or so later, Carlos rang Alex and invited him down to the Facebook offices in London. He said, “I need to show you something. And the only way I can do that is if you come down here to see it.”
Alex, of course, agreed and travelled down to Islington where Facebook is based. When Alex arrived, Carlos showed him the private, internal ‘Facebook For Work’ group for Oculus.
A day or so before, Carlos had posted the video of the residents enjoying the VR experience in that work group.
He was stunned by the response. Many Oculus employees had commented on the video. Words such as. “This is amazing.”, “This is the best use of our technology I’ve seen.”, “What are we doing to work with these people?”, “How are we supporting this project?”. Things like that.
But these weren’t comments only from the lower ranks of Oculus.These were comments, in many cases, from the board of Oculus.
Carlos said, “I’ve never seen them this excited about anything. This is incredible. We’ve already reached level one.The board of Oculus already want to help!”.
He also mentioned that the global online video meeting for Oculus was soon approaching. And it could be a good opportunity to showcase the video of the residents using the application to rally more support.
A few weeks went by and Alex hadn’t heard anything from Carlos regarding the meeting.
So he thought it had come and gone and perhaps the response wasn’t as good as expected.
But one night a few days later at about 11pm, Alex received a phone call from Carlos. He sounded incredibly excited.
Carlos exclaimed, “Alex. Alex. You’re never going to believe what just happened! They just showed your video at the global Oculus meeting. But, not only did they show it. It was introduced by the Chief Technology Officer of Facebook, Mike Schroepfer!”.
“And when he introduced it. He said, “I want everyone to pay attention.This is what our technology was built for.”.
Mike Schroepfer!
So already, because of the emotional power of the video. Alex and Carlos had achieved, not only the support of the Oculus board. But now the support of the board at Facebook.
This enabled them to launch the product commercially in the healthcare space. And even triggered Facebook to create a whole new division, Oculus For Business, which still exists to this day. Providing commercial VR applications.
The Immersicare project was born.