The Influence of VR Therapy in Reshaping Healthcare Practices with Veena Somareddy, CEO of Neuro Rehab VR

[00:00:01] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.

[00:00:29] Hey everybody, Saul Marquez with the Outcomes Rocket. I want to welcome you back to our podcast. Today I have the privilege of hosting Veena Somareddy again. She is the CEO of Neuro Rehab VR, a VR healthcare startup aimed at building virtual reality therapy exercises for physical therapy.

[00:00:50] Her accolades include being recognized as a top innovator in North Texas, Fast Company's World Changing Ideas honoree, and featured in Forbes and Cosmopolitan. She's also the recipient of a National Science Foundation grant and one of the 10 startups chosen to participate in the first Amazon Healthcare Accelerator.

[00:01:11] Using her many years of research and development experience in VR and AR, she's helping to connect technology and healthcare to enhance patient care and rehabilitation outcomes greatly. I'm excited to have you back on the podcast, Veena. So glad you're back on with us. Thank you. I'm excited to be back here and doing this with you again. I am still in North Texas. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Very nice. No, actually, we were in San Diego for a while and now we're in Puerto Rico. So.

[00:01:41] Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. That sounds more fun than not Texas right now. Yeah, you know, it's not too bad. I'm a big fan of Texas and the work being done there, the innovation. Right. And speaking of which, speaking of which, talk to us about what's new with NeuroHab VR. What have you been seeing? Yeah, of course. I can give a quick overview just for people who might not know what we do.

[00:02:06] So as you said in my bio, we create a virtual reality therapy exercises for physical therapy, occupational therapy. We started working with patients in the beginning with Neuro patients. People have had strokes, myocard injuries, MS, Parkinson's. And we now also work with orthopedic cases like knee injuries, hip injuries. And we also have a mental health component as part of our device. So it's a very comprehensive device that can be used in rehab from an inpatient setting to an outpatient setting.

[00:02:35] And also at home, we have made it as versatile as possible. So from the time that we had our first conversation, a lot has changed, you know, a lot of improvements. So we are in many more health systems and the VA. Right now, we have had a lot of uptick for our devices. Patients are really engaged. Some patients are asking for virtual reality to be included in their therapy plans.

[00:02:59] And then we have added many more areas such as going grocery shopping, going driving to make sure that you're working on your everyday living task in virtual reality so that it transfers to the VR world. And another big thing that we came out with is our certification program. So now you can be a VR certified clinician. So we have the privilege to certify the next generation of physical therapists and occupational therapists, speech therapists and rec therapists that are also coming into the workforce.

[00:03:29] So lots of new updates. And we are also using AI as part of our strategy right now. We have lots of enhancements within our applications itself that changes according to the patient's performance levels. And we have more AI tools that are coming out that I can't talk about right now. As people, you know, may or may not be familiar with VR, AR as a tool to help with some of the rehab work that you do.

[00:03:55] Talk to us about some interesting information around why it's useful and what particular types of outcomes you and the team are seeing with the use of VR, AR. Yeah, definitely. So one is patient engagement that has been an issue in physical therapy and occupational therapy. This really helps with that. You're transporting the patient to a different world where they kind of forget the bias of their diagnosis. So they're doing more without thinking about it.

[00:04:22] And some patients, especially chronic patients, have a mental barrier. They think this is what I can do. And sometimes they don't go beyond it. And you've seen patients go beyond that. And for the therapist side of things, you know, since COVID, there has been a lot of strain on the health care systems with some clinicians being burnt out or leaving clinical roles. So now we are providing this really amazing tool for them to use in their clinical setting where you just have to open the app, launch, and you're good to go.

[00:04:51] And you can put the patient in any scenario that you would like them to be, depending on the functional tasks they're working on. So we have seen a lot of uptick from therapists loving the device and being able to provide those outcomes that they can for patients. And also with therapists, you know, however they're feeling that day, they're able to provide really quality outcome and care and also track those data analytics that you really can't with just normal traditional therapy.

[00:05:18] Maybe it's more of a subjective way of tracking if the patient is getting better. But with our data analytics portal, you can see these incremental, small incremental changes that you otherwise won't be able to see with that patient, which gives hope for the patient and also the therapist to keep going. Man, I have this VR set in my closet. And I remember when I first got it, I used to do meditation with it. Oh, nice. And it even helped me, you know, with my mindset.

[00:05:48] Are you finding providers are using these? We've had many instances where the providers are actually using our mental health applications for themselves. So it's been more of a, you know, something that they buy for the patients and end up using for themselves too, which we fully understand and we want to support that. And we have breathing exercises as part of our applications. We have guided meditation.

[00:06:12] We have relaxing scenarios that you can travel to like Paris or Australia and just relax for a little bit when you have some downtime and, you know, energize yourself to get back into work. So that has been great to see. That's not something that we thought would happen, but it's happening more and more. And, you know, we are happy to support our providers. These apps for mental wellness are also part of the Neuro Rehab VR platform? Yes, it is.

[00:06:38] So we started in the physical therapy space, but as we were working on this very interactive movement-based applications, we had more and more of our patients that come in who are depressed. They might have pain that day. They don't want to do that therapy. That's something that was being overlooked. And we wanted to make sure that we have applications for that too, because we're a software company. That's a good thing about us being agile and fast. We can build things depending on the feedback that we are receiving.

[00:07:06] So we added these mental health applications later, which really helps for patients that come in. Maybe they don't want to do therapy that day. It's a good place to just go in, get relaxed in this pretty, really pretty environment. Go pet the animals, the virtual animals that we have. You can feed apples to them. And then you can also go fishing in that environment. So now that kind of, you know, loses them up there. You know, now they're excited about therapy, distracts them from the pain.

[00:07:32] And now they're able to get into that physical therapy piece of, you know, being interactive, pushing them, you know, increase that intensity of training, whatever the physical therapist is working on with them. So that really was a seamless transition for us. Looking at the quadruple aim here, right? Being able to take care of patients, but also the well-being of our providers. It's critical. So really great to hear that that's a spillover effect of the great work that you guys are doing. So tell us a little bit about the VA work.

[00:08:02] How are you guys helping out our veterans? Yeah, definitely. We are in several locations in the VA. We work with the spinal cord injury departments, the traumatic brain injury departments, and also recreation therapy has been great. So with our veterans, we're working with people who have been amputees or prosthetics. And the good thing about our device, it's very versatile. So it can be used with anybody.

[00:08:26] And I think for me, we had not previously with the patient population that we're working with, we had not previously worked with an amputee. And we were able to strap one of our controllers to his upper arm when this person, you know, his lower arm was amputated. And he was still able to use our device for his therapy session, which is amazing to see. That was ourselves looking at our device being pushed to its boundaries and it working well.

[00:08:50] So with the VA, we are working with making sure that our veterans are able to, both on the mental health side of things, working on the stress and anxiety and mental health and also continuing with the rehab piece so they can get to the outcomes that they're looking for in their rehabilitation process. And the good thing about veterans, our device can be used in both inpatient setting on the bedside. So you can start off on the bedside and then go into the outpatient setting and then also take it home. So there's that real continuum of care for them.

[00:09:20] That's fantastic. What a great story and a great application. You know, where do you see this all going? When we talked four years ago, three, four years ago, it was the beginning and it was still kind of like nobody really believed it. Today, people are using it. And so 10 years from now, where do you envision this AR VR opportunity going? So I can see providers staying standard of care when they think about VR.

[00:09:47] We as the vendors have been saying that forever, but it's nice to see the providers now seeing it on their own. And we're thinking about this as a standard of care. And that's where we wanted to go to because there's lots of data that shows it's more efficient. Patients are more motivated. They're engaged. And that is leading to better outcomes when it comes to fall risk, when it comes to balance issues, and also reaching their therapy goals for the patient. So it's a much more efficient and cost-effective way to do it.

[00:10:15] And as the older population is growing faster, exponentially faster than the rest of the population of the U.S., there are more and more people who are turning 65 and older every day. I think it's about 10,000 people per day. But the number of clinicians aren't growing at the same rate. So there is a need for a more scalable, cost-effective way of doing health care. And I'm sure there are lots of other companies working on this piece too.

[00:10:39] And we are doing our small part so that one therapist will be able to manage multiple patients with using technology like ours and also being part of that continuum of care for them from the acute care setting to the home care setting. And use our AI tools that will make their work more efficient, take away the route, documentation work that they have to do, things that they probably are not excited to do. We can take that piece.

[00:11:06] We can take that burden away from them so they can spend as much time they can with the patient. In coming to the more broader VR, AR industry, I can see these devices getting smaller and more powerful. I'm sure that's the more so that's coming into play. And VR and AR will be in just one device instead of it being two different devices. We already are seeing that with Ben Meadows' new headset and the Apple Vision Pro.

[00:11:30] So now we can go from right now just being VR where you're fully immersed in a virtual setting to making sure you see these digital objects in your real world, which is a great training transfer from the virtual world to the real world. So now patients can feel like they can actually get that muscle memory that they need to finish the task or do the ADLs that they're looking for. So I'm really excited about where the industry is going, where there's more and more investment going into hardware from bigger companies, which is great for us.

[00:11:59] As software engineers, as the hardware gets better and we have things like eye tracking, facial recognition, we can use that software and also hand tracking to make our applications more and more intuitive, more and more realistic for that patient. Thanks for your vision. It's always great to connect with leaders in the space to help us think bigger about the options. And Veena, we thank you for that.

[00:12:23] For anybody wanting to learn more about the work that you and the team at NeuroRehabVR, where can they reach out and learn more? Sure, definitely. You can always reach us at our website, NeuroRehabVR.com. We are on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at NeuroRehabVR. So it's very easy. It's just one word and we're looking to help as many people as we can. So connect with us. Outstanding, Veena. Folks, take action on what Veena shared.

[00:12:52] Check them out on any of the social platforms, their website. We'll leave everything in the show notes so you can do that. Veena, thanks for being with us. Of course. Thank you for having me. This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency.

[00:13:19] Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945. Outcomes Rocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945. Have a great day. Bye. Bye.