How Virtual Reality Brings Real Benefits to Senior Living
Rendever Health, a startup begun by a duo of graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management.
Since its inception, the company’s virtual reality subscription service has been praisedby Brookdale Senior Living (NYSE: BKD) and adopted by other senior housing providers across the country, co-founder Dennis Lally tells Senior Housing News.
Other senior living communities, meanwhile, have warmed to virtual reality technology without the help of a third-party vendor. That’s the case at Morning Pointe of Columbia, a 42-apartment assisted living and memory care community in Columbia, Tennessee. Virtual reality has been especially popular in community’s 18-apartment memory care wing, The Lantern—a fact that took Lantern Program Director Britney Hill by surprise.
“Just because they are in a secured environment doesn’t mean they don’t have an interest in traveling and experiencing new things,” Morning Pointe of Columbia Executive Director Tyler Sneed says. The community primarily downloads free virtual reality apps for residents to use on a Samsung Gear VR headset.
Rendever, on the other hand, works with several partners that create content for Samsung Gear VR headsets, Lally says. The startup also creates its own virtual reality content, which helps mitigate any potential complications that could arise from seniors’ use of the headsets.
Sometimes, residents opt to visit memorable locations from their past, like their childhood home or their college town.
“There’s a profound reaction from that,” Lally says.
Activity directors use tablets to control the virtual reality headsets, so residents don’t have to worry about whether they’re doing it right. Rendever has also enabled a “group sync functionality,” so groups of residents can take part in the same virtual reality experience together.
For the most part, though, residents’ reluctance to try virtual reality is quickly overcome once they see other residents having fun with it, Lally and Sneed agree.
See the full story here: http://seniorhousingnews.com/2017/03/27/virtual-reality-brings-real-benefits-senior-living/