How one VR company is helping the disabled undergo rehab from comfort of their homes amid lockdown
In the last five years, virtual reality (VR) applications have come a long way in helping with medical treatments. Several studies have been conducted with respect to the effectiveness of VR in pain management, anxiety treatment, physical therapy and gait training. Patients suffering from spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, stroke, autism, Parkinson's disease, burn treatments and so forth have turned to VR to help with their rehabilitation efforts.
In the United States, one company is trying to make VR accessible to patients. And in the current climate where lockdown measures have meant that patients cannot go into rehabilitation centers anymore, Mieron's VR products might help them continue treatment from the comforts of their homes.
MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) caught up with Jessica Maslin, who founded Mieron VR with Josh Dubon. The California-based company's website states that its goal is to "help users achieve more mobility, independence, and quality of life". It adds, "With an expansive library of upper and lower body mobility exercises, pain management experiences, and mental wellness techniques – there are multiple ways to put Mieron to work for all levels of mobility."
It also "works to activate the brain in new ways utilizing sensory input mechanisms and visuospatial elements of VR in order to develop new skills, increase brain fitness, and enhance performance through exercise."
Maslin and Dubon founded the company around three years ago. Prior to that, the two of them had roughly six to seven years of experience working in VR where they had done activations for Blockbuster movies, Black Friday doorbusters, narrative experiences, travel experiences and even worked with major movie studios.
They also worked with an artist, Greg "Craola" Simpkins who contacted them later to talk about his five-year-old niece, Eden, who was paralyzed from the waist down after a freak accident led to a spinal stroke. Maslin has a background in chemistry and bone growth research and the team had been looking at different avenues for VR to create something meaningful.
So, Maslin and Dubon met Eden in Kentucky where they did a preliminary test with her. They used the headset on Eden with an experience created with legendary skateboarder Christian Hosoi. What the duo saw was that Eden's self-imposed limitations — from being conscious about "feeling like a baby" — were gone and that Eden was smiling. Maslin said, "She's not worried about anything else except what's being presented in VR in front of her. She's exerting herself with a higher intensity for a longer period of time and her mental wellness is through the roof and we (thought) there's something more here."
When Maslin and Dubon got back to California, they recreated their original library and added in-house developments. Since then, Mieron has been adopted in seven countries around the world and they continue to develop the library with collaborations from the people that use it.
Maslin stressed the importance of patients continuing with their physical therapy during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. She said, "We saw a lot of our users that use Mieron in their rehab centers were no longer going into rehab because they had a fear of contracting the virus and getting ill, but also all of their rehab and activity-based training centers have since closed as they're not considered essential work."
She continued, "Now you have this whole population of people with disabilities who could be sitting in their wheelchairs at home with nowhere to go and nothing to do. For (abled people), if you're at home and quarantined and you fall off of your fitness routine, maybe you'll lose some muscle mass, maybe you'll gain a few pounds. It's not the end of the world. But for somebody that has a disability that can result in what then becomes a secondary injury can be the end of the world for them. So, if someone with a disability is not getting their physical activity, then they are not just losing their gains, they are losing their mobility and independence."
Mieron is expanding its home product to enter telehealth services so that practitioners can prescribe the product to their clients and have them do the exercises from the comfort and safety of their homes. Mieron also has products aimed at healthcare providers.
Maslin said that practitioners are able to bill the use of Mieron under existing codes of insurance as they use it as an ancillary tool to their existing practices. The company is working on getting the product covered by insurance for home use. With medical VR being new and different care packages being pushed to the government, one of the biggest expansions is happening in telehealth services. She said, "For people with disabilities who cannot go to rehab right now, they can work with their practitioners through telehealth and be able to utilize Mieron during their sessions. So in that case, insurance will be covering the program."