Season 2, Episode 1: Show Notes.
How does a former F-16 pilot become a leader in delivering immersive healthcare applications? XRHealth CEO and Founder Eran Orr is changing the healthcare industry one virtual reality treatment room at a time. In the first episode of Season 2 of Good Vibes with VIVE, HTC Executive Pearly Chen speaks with Eran about his founder story, what inspired him to start XRHealth and improving quality of life for patients around the world. Join us to learn how XRHealth is making healthcare more equitable and accessible for patients and clinicians.
Key Points From This Episode:
Tweetables:
“In the Israeli Air Force, it’s very profound that you need to learn from your mistakes, and then go back out there and try to get better, but you will make mistakes again. I think that’s very, very similar to the entrepreneur life.” — @EranOrr [0:06:41]
“Think about how many people worldwide don’t have access to health care. They’re not even close to a place where they can get quality care. Suddenly with this technology, anyone can get amazing care. Anyone, anywhere, anytime.” — @EranOrr [0:14:46]
“We as human beings, we need a holistic approach to get better. It’s not a single app, or a single exercise or a single device. You need to look at your recovery, or your process dealing with a chronic condition in a holistic way.” — @EranOrr [0:20:46]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Season 2, Episode 1: Show Notes.
How does a former F-16 pilot become a leader in delivering immersive healthcare applications? XRHealth CEO and Founder Eran Orr is changing the healthcare industry one virtual reality treatment room at a time. In the first episode of Season 2 of Good Vibes with VIVE, HTC Executive Pearly Chen speaks with Eran about his founder story, what inspired him to start XRHealth and improving quality of life for patients around the world. Join us to learn how XRHealth is making healthcare more equitable and accessible for patients and clinicians.
Key Points From This Episode:
Tweetables:
“In the Israeli Air Force, it’s very profound that you need to learn from your mistakes, and then go back out there and try to get better, but you will make mistakes again. I think that’s very, very similar to the entrepreneur life.” — @EranOrr [0:06:41]
“Think about how many people worldwide don’t have access to health care. They’re not even close to a place where they can get quality care. Suddenly with this technology, anyone can get amazing care. Anyone, anywhere, anytime.” — @EranOrr [0:14:46]
“We as human beings, we need a holistic approach to get better. It’s not a single app, or a single exercise or a single device. You need to look at your recovery, or your process dealing with a chronic condition in a holistic way.” — @EranOrr [0:20:46]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
SEASON 2, EPISODE 1
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:04] PC: Welcome to Good Vibes with VIVE. I’m your host, Pearly Chen. I’m an executive with global technology company, HTC. As a mother of three young girls, I’ve loved building and investing in profound immersive technologies that make a positive difference in people’s lives. Each week, I speak with founders at the forefront of VR, AR and the metaverse. All of them inspire me and some, I’ve been lucky enough to back as an investor. Tune in every week to hear some of the most inspiring closed-door conversations, and walk away informed, inspired, and full of good vibes.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:00:45] PC: Welcome to Good Vibes with VIVE. Today, I’m super happy to be joined by Eran Orr, the founder and CEO of XRHealth, who is a telehealth provider, a virtual reality therapies for patients everywhere from the comfort of their own homes. It is a network provider with a lot of major insurance payers like Medicare, Blue Cross Blue Shield and more, covering more than 80 million people across the US, Australia and Israel. But before we dive into Eran’s incredible work. Eran, let’s talk about your incredible story. How did a former F-16 pilot become a health care entrepreneur in your version of this story?
[00:01:32] EO: First of all, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure. I was serving as an F-16 fighter pilot for 15 years. And about eight years ago, I started feeling pain in my right hand. After a while, the pain grew stronger. I got to a point that I wasn’t able to pick up my two-year-old daughter. I was diagnosed as suffering from a whiplash injury due to the active flight and the G forces. I started a very long rehab process. And during my own rehab process, I asked my physical therapist, “Am I getting better?” And he told me, “I think you’re getting better.” I told him, “What do you mean?” I was like, “Show me numbers. Show me some evidence.” Like, “Yeah, we don’t use those here.” It’s like, “What do you mean? How do you know if we are on the right track?” He was like, “Yeah, in my own experience.”
That immediately triggered me that we have a problem on that front. And at the same time, I saw people playing with the Google Cardboard, just moving their head randomly while I was doing like 10 repetition to the right, 10 repetition to the left every day and I was like getting bored. I was like, “Okay. This is impossible.” Then the idea came about to combine the two. The original idea was to develop the VR by ourselves to attach weights to the VR, play a virtual reality game, only head-based only. While doing those, strengthening your neck muscles. That’s how we started. It looks like now today like a very bad idea, but that’s how we got started.
[00:03:07] PC: Can you clarify that? Adding weight to the virtual reality headset for training range of motion?
[00:03:13] EO: Range of motion and strengthening your neck.
[00:03:15] PO: Okay.
[00:03:18] EO: One of the problems in neck rehabilitation is that it’s very hard to exercise your neck muscles. By the way, whiplash injury is the most common injury, I think worldwide, in every car accident. The drivers are suffering from whiplash. When we started a company, that was the original idea, to create a device that can help you recover from a whiplash. The market is big, but you need a way to strengthen your neck muscles. It’s not enough to do just random exercises. Again, the idea was to create a VR headset with weights, and to play a virtual reality game and while moving your head randomly to strengthen your neck.
[00:04:03] PC: Fascinating. Did this idea inspire you to quit the Air Force service and dive into on the path of entrepreneurship of no return?
[00:04:13] EO: I think it was a combination of things. First of all, I was grounded for eight months, so I had time to think of what I want to do with my life. At the same time, I started my MBA and the first class that I attended was how to reduce risk when starting a startup. Basically, what I did at that point was to go to class and then go back home and do what the teacher told me, how to start a startup. Roughly at the same time, my wife got an offer to come and do her postdoc here in Boston. I knew that no one would hire me as an F-16 pilot, because it’s not a relevant profession that you can take anywhere. I said, “Okay. The only option is to start my own company.” So that’s what I did.
I tried to raise funds. I pitched I think 100 Israeli angel investors. Everyone told me, “No and it’s a bad idea.” That could be that they were right. I attended another class and during that class, someone presented in a different startup of equity crowdfunding, and then said, “Okay. The only option is to raise funds from the public.” We were the first and the biggest – I think, to date, the biggest crowdfunding campaign in Israel, equity crowdfunding in Israel. My first investor was my grandma.
[00:05:33] PC: I love that.
[00:05:35] EO: She was my first – she invested $10,000. And then, family, friends. But that’s how we got started, basically.
[00:05:43] PC: Amazing! You mentioned that you didn’t think the F-16 pilot career gave you some transferable skills in getting employment. But in hindsight, now that you’ve been on this path of building this company for five years, were there invaluable transferable skills from that experience, in company building and otherwise?
[00:06:03] EO: No doubt. I think, in the Air Force, especially in the Israeli Air Force, there’s a fundamental culture about debriefing and accept failures. When you’re flying an F-16, you’re constantly making mistakes. You can’t have a flawless mission. You just can’t. You’re constantly making mistakes. In the Israeli Air Force, it’s very profound that you need to learn from your mistakes, and then go back out there and try to get better, but you will make mistakes again. I think that’s very, very similar to the entrepreneur life. If you embrace failure, and you know that you will make mistakes, you won’t get it right, even today, by the way, we know we won’t get it right from the first time, but the question is, how can you get better the second time and the third time?
That approach allows you to move faster. I think someone asked me at some point, “How can startups win?” Think about it. When a startup is starting a new endeavor, there are bigger companies with more resources, the human capital access, like everyone can get the same talent, right? Technology is available to everyone. Everyone can do whatever a startup can do. But somehow, every 10 years, there are emerging companies that are winning the big companies. That’s given. Someone gave me an interesting analogy is that, startups just move faster. You can just move faster and make better decisions if you are learning from your mistakes. And then if it’s like playing a chess game, where the startup always do two moves when the big organizations are making one move, because they feel comfortable taking risks, and they are feeling comfortable to move fast and they’re feeling comfortable to learn from their mistakes. I think that’s very, very identical to how a pilot in the Israeli Air Force need to perform in order to get better.
[00:08:02] PC: You started out by providing essentially a virtual reality of physical therapy to patients through clinicians. You’re trying to offer this as a service through these different physical therapists to offer to their patients. Now five years into this path, you have grand ambitions of becoming the direct provider of care directly to patients through this virtual clinic that you just announced this week in [SCES 00:08:27] with us. Tell us about that shift in your strategic thinking. Why go from B2B to now go into direct to patients and delivering your care?
[00:08:38] EO: We decided that we believe that this technology can change people’s lives. We saw enough patients telling us that this is as powerful as drugs, and it can help them recover from whatever conditions that they’re in. We decided that we will own everything, even if the healthcare providers are not a believer, that doesn’t matter. Because the patient is at the end of the day, what matters. Then the only option to provide access to this amazing technology to the patient was to own the entire process. And then we said, “Okay, we’ll be the provider,” because that’s the only option to actually provide the access to the technology. I remember that I was trying to fundraise again, obviously, and again, investors told me, “What? You’re a tech company. You want to be a provider? Are you nuts?” I said, “I don’t have any other option. This is the only option to get access to –”
[00:09:40] PC: Get to patients.
[00:09:41] EO: Get to patients and to provide them with the relevant technology that can help them. And again, by the way, all investors threw us out immediately when I told them that I’m planning to be a provider, again, we did another crowdfunding, a very big one, also very successful one. And then two years ago, we said, “Okay, all in. We’re about to be a provider.” And now, it was a very interesting shift, even internal, even for our employees. For our investors, it was a hard shift, because it’s very uncommon for a tech company to become a healthcare provider. It’s like the different animals and we’re trying to combine the two. It was, by the way, far harder than I expected. By far more complex. It took us three times the money and the time to actually get to where we are today. Because to be a healthcare provider, especially in the US, it’s a very, very complex market. Just to give you a sense for the audience, we are still sending faxes.
[00:10:45]PC: Wow!
[00:10:45] EO: We have a fax machine. That’s like what we’re using.
[00:10:48] PC I can’t believe it.
[00:10:48] EO: But we don’t have any other option, because there’s another complexity in this. And I think that it’s slowly, slowly evolving. Just to close the loop on the question, what we’re trying to do now is to say, okay, we have been in the last five years developing those virtual treatment rooms. And we believe that we will be able to basically take all the brick-and-mortar model, and turn it to be completely virtual. I personally believe that, in five years from now, we will get access to care and treatment in a VR, AR environment in the metaverse, whatever you want to call it. And only when needed, will drive to the hospital. But the vast majority of treatment will be done in virtual reality treatment rooms, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to build now.
[00:13:11] PC: Let’s talk about the benefits of virtual reality treatment versus your normal brick and mortar therapies that you personally experienced. Intuitively speaking, it must be a lot more fun, a lot easier to access, you don’t need to worry about booking appointments and limited access to clinicians. I imagine, a higher engagement rate. But what are some of the other metrics that you do measure in terms of patient benefits from virtual reality therapies versus traditional ones?
[00:12:11] EO: As you mentioned, obviously, the beautiful thing about virtual treatment rooms is we don’t have to be constrained to the old fashioned how a treatment looks like. We can create any virtual treatment room that we want. And we can create a fun and engaging experience compared to something that is from the 1800s. That immediately changes the entire experience on the patient side. We can create different types of social experiences inside that virtual treatment rooms, everything HIPAA compliant. You don’t need to know who is on the other side, besides it’s another peer that is experiencing something like you.
On the experience side, I think it’s not even close to what people are experiencing now. Obviously, the access is a game changer. Suddenly, you don’t need to drive 45 minutes, wait 15 minutes, and then maybe the clinician have time for you for 15 minutes and then drive back and give you a piece of paper to do back home where no one actually have any idea what you’re doing. The access is also very, very important. I want to emphasize that, think about how many people worldwide don’t have access to health care. They’re not even close to a place where they can get quality care. Suddenly with this technology, anyone can get amazing care. Anyone, anywhere, anytime. That’s on the access side.
Now on the outcome side, we have now for the first time, the possibility to quantify outcomes. Because when someone had a virtual treatment room, it’s a closed-loop system. They are the only variable in a closed-loop system. We are monitoring everything. Today, we’re monitoring respiratory, center of gravity, differences between your right side, left side, cognitive skills, eye tracking. The amount of data that we can capture in one treatment is, I think, 500 times better than any brick-and-mortar clinic, if not more. But that also allows us to now understand what’s working and what’s not.
The fact that you can go to a brick and mortar, to a physical therapist, or an occupational therapist, or even psychologist with the same text and say, “This is my problem.” Then you can step to a different brick and mortar, two miles from that same location and get a completely different treatment, completely different. No one actually knows what’s working and what’s not. That’s like mind blowing to me. Those virtual treatment tools will allow us to, for the first time, put numbers next to a treatment, next to an outcome, and then analyze what’s working and what’s not. And then we can improve care for everyone, because we will know what’s more effective.
[00:14:55] PC: That was your original inspiration, as well, the desire to know with hard data, whether it’s working, whether you’re on the right track to recovery.
[00:15:04] EO: Exactly. What we are telling our clinicians, “It’s a process. But we’re getting there, surely, slowly but surely.” You need to make decisions based on data. You need to look at the data, look at the patient status, try to compare that patient to other patient data, and then decide what is the best treatment for that specific patient at that specific time. If we have enough data points, then we can start sharing between clinicians like, “Look, that clinician was able to get a better outcome because he used that protocol.” And at some point again, we will create, hopefully, like a common knowledge of what’s more effective treatment compared to other treatments. That’s what we’re trying to do. Again, it’s a very complex process, but I’m sure we can change our thinking in the industry by doing that.
[00:15:55] PC: And on the patient experience side, I read some research that you conducted with your patients. Engagement rate has really improved as well with virtual reality. Probably because of how much more enjoyable it is. It’s 91% adherence to therapy regimen versus 50% with a traditional therapy.
[00:16:16] EO: One of the major problems as I explained earlier, one of the biggest problems today is that the entire process of a brick and mortar is very – there’s a lot of friction from the patient’s side. You need to drive two way to get checked, and it’s not fun, it’s not engaging. And at the end of the day, it’s affecting the outcomes. The fact that you can just reach out to the clinic and put it on, that’s what people are doing. Instead of all the friction that I just mentioned, immediately improve compliance. And coupling that with fun and engaging experience, you can immediately show the patient the results. They don’t need to wait and assume something good will happen. All of those things combined improve compliance and adherence in a way that I think is very meaningful.
We have patients using the VR device three hours a week. We have patients telling us they’re reaching out to the VR instead of reaching out to the painkillers. I’m talking about hundreds of patients. It’s not one or two. I think that’s the beauty about the entire technology. And they also know by the way, which is also meaningful that they know that the clinician see if they’re compliant or not. That’s also an incentive for some people because they need to meet with their clinicians twice a week, and they need to discuss their outcomes, because they are part of the process. I think that’s the combination that improve compliance, and at the end of the day, also improve outcomes dramatically.
[00:17:51] PC: And the patients feel like they have better agency as well, being in the know and being a core part of the process. It becomes a true partnership in the road to recovery. Now you have eight different FDA registered therapy regimens to offer directly to patients that are reimbursable by insurance payers. Tell us a bit about that.
[00:18:12] EO: One of the things that we realized I think early on is that we as human beings, we need a holistic approach to get better. It’s not a single app, or a single exercise or a single device. You need to look at your recovery, or your process dealing with a chronic condition in a holistic way. The way that we are approaching that is, imagine that you are stepping into a hospital, right? In a hospital, you have multiple departments, multiple rooms, multiple physicians and clinician treating you. Now, take this entire big hospital, very complex system, and put it in your pocket and get the patient the possibility to access each and every one of those rooms wherever they want, based on what they believe is right for them at the right time. By doing so, again, at the end of the day get better outcomes.
Now, in order to do that, we are developing those virtual treatment rooms, all FDA regulated. So as you mentioned, we have eight of those. But it’s up for the clinician to decide which room they need to transport the patient to and when, based on their current condition and what they need. What we are seeing is that we have very, very good success in the chronic condition. Because chronic conditions usually involve multidisciplinary solutions. It’s not just one solution, right? You’re dealing with a chronic condition that affects your day-to-day activity, and you need a holistic approach.
Now, besides that, what we are doing now, we are also partnering up with other VR developers, because we are realizing that we won’t be able to develop all the virtual treatments rooms on our own. It’s not a one developer type of a mission. We are looking for more and more VR companies in the healthcare arena that want to partner with us, want to offer their virtual treatment rooms or their application to our patients. And again, with the goal of creating a variety of those treatment rooms where the clinician can pick and choose whatever they want to do with that specific patient at that specific time.
[00:20:35] PC: So would you say that you specialize in certain chronic diseases or you want to be a one stop destination for any type of –
[00:20:45] EO: So at the moment, we are seeing success in neurological disorders, Parkinson’s [inaudible 00:20:49], post-stroke. We’re seeing very good success with chronic pain, fibromyalgia, lower back pain. We’re seeing very, very, very interesting results in engagement with ASD back in Australia.
[00:21:04] PC: ADHD?
[00:21:05] EO: ADHD and ASD.
[00:21:06] PC: And ASD.
[00:21:07] EO: ASD, yeah.
[00:21:09] PC: Autism Spectrum Disorder, right?
[00:21:12] EO: Which is very interesting. And stress and anxiety. Those are the conditions that we are seeing at the moment, like pockets of very high engagement, super users, people that find our platform very helpful for them. Moving forward, the goal is to replace any outpatient service that’s being done today and create those treatment rooms inside that metaverse and inside that virtual environment. That’s, again, short term and long term, but that’s how we see the world today.
[00:21:47] PC: But it seems like the right timing as well, as just as you were switching gears to become a direct provider. The world also entered an unprecedented pandemic, where it’s much more difficult for patients to go to get their brick-and-mortar physical care. It seems like the overall attitude, public opinion towards telehealth is also shifting, giving convenience, giving infection control, right? They’re becoming the reasons that patients would offer telehealth versus going to visit a clinic. I read some data about the attitude shift. So 35% of the public would consider replacing their primary care provider entirely with qualified physicians via telehealth, 43% of adults will want to continue telehealth services after the pandemic, and 40% of them say that they interact with their health care providers much more because of telehealth for various obvious reasons.
This seems like the right timing, and as you are converging what you’ve been working on over the past five years, at this time, it’s becoming very critical for patients to access care, in their own terms, location, timing wise and it really is rising to the challenge of the time as well.
[00:22:59] EO: Two years ago, when I needed to try to convince health plan to cover our services, their answer usually is like, “We don’t even cover telehealth.” That’s like when we started this shift. And obviously, COVID accelerated everything for us, because now the conversation is completely different. Like, “We treat a Parkinson’s patient through the interface and video calls, it’s not good enough. What do you have to offer that is not through the interface?” I think that the pandemic created, obviously, a huge opportunity for us, but it also open the minds of people that it can be done. Because again, before the pandemic, it was like unheard of that you can treat someone remotely, right? It’s like, it was, “Okay, you can maybe prescribe a med, but you can’t treat someone remotely.”
I think today, people across the board in the healthcare arena, and in the general public, there is more open mind that it’s doable. Now, the challenge is basically up to us prove how good can it be. It’s less – we crossed the chasm that it’s doable. And now, it’s, okay, can you really replace the brick-and-mortar clinic or not? That’s like the type of discussions that we have.
[00:24:21] PC: So can we? Where’s your confidence level and where’s theirs?
[00:24:26] EO: I think in the condition that I mentioned previously, we have enough data, both internal – and by the way, we’re planning to publish a lot of data in 2022, to also have peer reviewed on our data. But I can tell you that from the patient side – and by the way, anyone can go and look for XRHealth reviews on Google and see what patients are saying. I think there is no doubt. I have no doubt that we can, in those conditions, do a better job than a brick and mortar. Get better outcomes, better engagement. And at the end of the day, have healthier patients and do everything remotely.
Now, again, we won’t be able to replace everything and we’re not claiming that that’s what we’re doing. But in the specific condition where you need to get treatment on a weekly basis in those chronic conditions, we believe we can do a better job than a brick and mortar.
[00:25:24] PC: Tell us about that. The whole patient journey of onboarding. Let’s say, someone who’s listening to this podcast right now has a chronic lower back pain or some of the other conditions you mentioned and would like to give this a try. Is it a complex process? Virtual reality sometimes can sound a little scary in terms of adopting a new technology. How do you, XRHealth, as a direct healthcare provider in this case make sure that this is a seamless and delightful process while delivering good care?
[00:25:53] EO: One of the things that we invested heavily in the last two years was to make sure that anyone at any age can access the technology in the virtual treatment. By the way, we spend, I think in the last two years, and lots more money and time on solving logistics problem and onboarding problem than some – I don’t think we even improve our VR application at all in the last two years. It’s like the same application. Because when we looked at our product, we realized that usability and how to get inside those virtual treatment rooms is far more important than the graphics or what’s happening inside VR.
Today, patient can just go to a website, sign up. One of our clinicians will do a video call to make sure that they are suitable to use VR and they don’t have any contraindication. Then we are shipping them a headset, pre-installed only with medical software, no gaming, no entertainment, no noise. The setup is as simple as possible. You’re downloading a mobile app that guides you how to do that for the first time. From that point on, we are conducting those virtual treatment completely remotely. The clinician on their end, they have the ability to control the headset. The patient doesn’t even need to do anything besides put the headset on and read the number for the clinician to take control. Everything in a HIPAA compliant way obviously and encrypted.
They are conducting those virtual treatment rooms and after every session, there are full analytics. So both the patient can see the statistics and the clinician can see the statistics. Once the patient is done, they can ship the headset back to us or they can opt-in to a subscription maintenance plan and keep the headset. The average age, and I think it’s another interesting piece of information, the average age in our virtual clinics is 62. We have patients up to 94 –
[00:27:50] PC: Wow!
[00:27:51] EO: – using the product on a weekly basis. We are conducting now treatment every seven minutes on average and the company treated 1000s of patients. We keep growing relatively fast. It all goes back to the fact that, again, you need to create a situation where the end user is not a gamer. That’s I think what we realize. You need to make sure that the user can enter the metaverse or the treatment room in an easy way, and get value immediately. We had a goal at some point that if it takes more than 10 seconds to get to a virtual treatment room, we are doing something wrong.
[00:28:37] PC: Well, that's a very ambitious target. That’s great. You’ve been investing a lot into making sure the usability onboarding is a breeze for patients, given that they’re clearly not gamers, a lot of them are not natural, new technology adopters. We want to make sure that they get the outcome immediately in 10 seconds, wow. I’m going to hold you and the team to that. That’s really ambitious. I want to get onboarded and started getting treatment in 10 seconds, pop on the headset. Then everyone should be getting their regular treatments in virtual reality. That will really transform the patient’s experience and outcome.
[00:29:14] EO: Yep, that’s exactly the idea. I think we are getting there. I’m not sure where, again, we’re not in the 10, but we are in the seconds, not in the minutes.
[00:29:25] PC: Right. Why should a patient or audience considering to adopt VR technology for therapy be excited to look forward to in terms of new developments that should be coming their way in 2022 and beyond?
[00:29:42] EO: I think the most exciting thing, first of all, is the partnership with you guys. I think the Vive Flow is the first device that – and I’ve been around six years in the industry, by the way, the first time I used the device, it was – we transitioned from the Cardboard to the Vive devices. I think it was late 2016, if I remember correctly. That’s when I realized that this will be something completely meaningful worldwide. One of my best experiences in onboarding was the Vive first onboarding process. But the Flow, looking within the last six years, I think the Flow is the first transition from a headset to glasses, right, form factor that is a completely different type of form factor, while the quality is basically the same.
I think one of the problems that we faced is that at the end of the day, old version of the hardware are still clunky, people are not feeling like they look funny. I think the Flow is completely different in that way. I think pushing the Flow to patients, especially on the mental health side, pain management side, group therapy that we have now, that we are launching. I think the combination of the Flow and our platform will be very, very meaningful for patients. The fact that you can take it anywhere, you can use it anywhere. That’s one exciting thing that will probably be available to the public around April. That’s one.
Besides that, we are adding more virtual treatment rooms, hopefully, again, on all fronts. We are planning to add biofeedback and different types of sensors that we believe will improve the overall experience and overall treatments. We have multiple patents that we already received for the combination of biofeedback in VR, AR and how you create a closed loop system that can actually generate better outcomes. I think that all in all, we are planning to enter the AR space, we are looking at the AR space. And AR is an interesting space as a whole. If you’re using your phone, or you’re using –hopefully, there will be some device that will come out in 2022 that will be relevant for consumers. But if not, we will probably use some phone-based AR as a combination to the VR headset.
The last thing is, again, all the combination of a protocol to a treatment and how to get that closed-loop system better, I’m very hopeful that we’ll be able to launch a clinician assistant that will recommend the clinician what to do, based on all the data that we have. That’s another project that we are looking into in 2022. But the main, main thing will be to provide more people the access to the virtual treatment tools and to make sure more people know about us. I think one of the challenges that we have today that not enough people know that we exist, and this solution is actually available. That’s like the 22 high level what we had in mind.
[00:33:05] PC: That’s exciting. Got plenty of work to do ahead of you and we look forward to playing a meaningful role in expanding the impact of your work so we can deliver better patient outcome to people around the world who need it. What are some of your other predictions for the development of the metaverse in 2022 and beyond?
[00:33:27] EO: I think we will find ourself transitioning from a 2D interface to a 3D interface as a whole. I think we will find ourselves interacting with digital objects, like we are interacting in real life. I think when we’re in 2040, this entire 2D interface will be like people looking at faxes today. It’s like, “What?” Because at the end of the day, we interact and we live in a 3D environment. The 2D environment is a limitation of technology. Once we will enable a 3D interaction with digital objects, our entire interactions with technology will change.
I’ll just add another thing. I’ll give you a small example. One of our partners, and investors is AARP, the biggest consumer group for the elderly population in the US. Now, when we develop the platform, we did multiple tests with AARP members. And we did the virtual treatment in the virtual treatment room. And then we asked the same people to fill a survey in a tablet, and we found that they had no issue in the VR environment interacting with everything. And then they have to fill a survey and they failed, not just they weren’t able to interact like the right touch screens, like it’s not working and see it’s working. Those people just completed 15 minutes in VR, complete treatment, like everything. Then I realized, like currently, the interface that we have is another relevant interface that people – we taught ourselves, we taught our kids and we taught ourselves how to interact to the interface. But that’s another relevant interface for human beings. It’s not how we operate.
Once we’ll unlock a third 3D interaction, and again, it could be in VR, could be in AR, it doesn’t really matter, everything will change. And the entire interaction will happen in 3D. We’ll find ourselves shifting from digital objects to physical objects completely in VR, partly in VR. But I think it will change dramatically how we conduct business, how we have our social lives, how we consume health care or different types of services. I told my kids the other day that I hope that that it will be in our lifetime. But that’s, again, a lot of companies need to do a lot of stuff in order to get us there. But I have no doubt, we’ll get there. It’s just a matter of time, frame and technology.
[00:36:06] PC: On that note, thank you, Eran for joining us today. You can learn more about Eran and XRHealth team’s work at xr.health. For patients, for people who are suffering chronic conditions like pain, you can definitely look into their work and consider signing up to be a patient, try out their virtual clinics that is guided by certified clinicians. And we’re looking forward to making sure that XRHealth and their therapies can reach a broader audience in 2022 and beyond. Thank you very much, Eran. Thank you for joining us today.
[00:36:41] EO: Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
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[00:36:45] PC: Thank you for listening. Please subscribe and share this podcast with a colleague or friend that you think could use some good vibes. Learn more at vive.com and follow HTC Vive on social media. See you next week.
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