MIT startup lets seniors enter the world of virtual reality
Norma Gorman could barely contain her excitement as she donned a set of goggles that transported her, in time and space, from her assisted living center in Sudbury to her childhood home in Lynn.
Through a virtual reality headset, Gorman revisited Marianna Street, pointing her finger in different directions as she described the old neighborhood to other seniors at the Orchard Hill facility: there’s the house where she grew up, her grandmother’s, over there the Hennesseys and the Murphys, and the former police chief’s, whose last name she couldn’t remember — each discovery punctuated with an “Oh my goodness!”
“I can’t believe that, did you see?” the 88-year-old Gorman exclaimed in disbelief. “You can go anywhere in the world. Whoa!”
Gorman owes her world travels to Reed Hayes, 28, and Dennis Lally, 27, two MIT Sloan School of Management graduate students whose startup, Rendever Health , is developing virtual reality programs to provide entertainment in assisted living facilities, and down the road, to test and treat seniors for the effects of aging.
“We started to notice once they were done with the demo they would go back to their friends at their table and talk about what they experienced. It was social, it lit a spark,” Hayes said. “Can you imagine coming up with a new conversation after being there 10 years and you haven’t been out?”
Hayes and Lally have developed their own software platform to use with the VR headsets, including adventures like a trip to Paris or an up close experience with performers from Cirque du Soleil. They plan on adding 360-degree virtual reality video cameras so family members can share events, such as weddings, with elderly relatives at an assisted living facility.
Hayes and Lally have poured about $13,000 of their own funds into Rendever Health and are looking for investors.
See the full story here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/05/12/mit-startup-lets-seniors-enter-world-virtual-reality/XbaWge6EseufMYu2tZ87TN/story.html