Virtual Reality Aimed At The Elderly Finds New Fans
Virginia Anderlini is 103 years old, and she is about to take her sixth trip into virtual reality.
In real life, she is sitting on the sofa in the bay window of her San Francisco assisted-living facility. Next to her, Dr. Sonya Kim gently tugs the straps that anchor the headset over Anderlini's eyes.
But in the virtual world, Anderlini is on a Hawaiian beach, and it's sunset, and she is surrounded by a glistening sea and a molten, purple-red sky. If she looks up, she sees the fronds of an enormous palm tree, and falling rainbow specks that dance in the air like the light from a disco ball.
For a virtual reality entrepreneur, Kim has an unusual target audience: the elderly. Anderlini is the first private client for Kim's Aloha VR program, which Kim envisions as a way to help people relax, an alternative to endlessly watching TV and a change of scenery for those who can't get out much.
"When I was driving back home from that visit, I couldn't stop sobbing," Kim says. "As a single woman without any kids, I thought, when I'm her age, who's going to call me? Who's going to take care of me?"
That interaction led Kim to found One Caring Team in 2014. Staffers regularly phone seniors at home to check on their mood, medications and appointments, and prompt them to chat about positive subjects, like what makes them happy or what they could do to bring joy to someone else.
"There are over 100 clinical research papers that are already published that show proven positive clinical outcomes using VR in managing chronic pain, anxiety and depression," she says. "And in dementia patients, all those three elements are very common."
Kim's company has created a handful of virtual environments for demonstration purposes, but it will take time and money to build more. So, for now, they also buy off-the-shelf programs to give the clients a little variety. (They recently teamed with the Virtual World Society, a group that intends to use VR to promote social good. The group's founder, the University of Washington's virtual interface pioneer Dr. Tom Furness, is now One Caring Team's acting chief technology officer.)
See the full story here: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/29/483790504/virtual-reality-aimed-at-the-elderly-finds-new-fans