This company is bringing VR directly to patients

The story: With its latest acquisition, XRHealth is doubling down on its goal of being the leading VR company in the healthcare space. It plans to do so by avoiding middlemen and serving as a provider itself.

• XRHealth acquired RealizedCare, a chronic pain-focused immersive experience and coaching platform.
• The combined entity will now offer treatments spanning mental health, chronic pain, and other conditions.

VR’s uphill battle: Both XRHealth and RealizedCare’s corporate precursor were founded in the mid-2010s, during a wave of new VR technologies hitting the market, bolstered by Big Tech investments. 

• Yet, in the years that followed, these devices, while impressing many with their demos, have largely failed to transform the behavioral health and chronic condition care landscapes as many hoped. And that’s not the fault of the technologies themselves. 
• The issue has largely stemmed from a lack of adoption. Payers, providers, and patients haven’t adopted VR startups’ therapies in the ways many hoped.
• In light of this trend, many VR startups, like RealizedCare, have turned to acquisition opportunities.

Meanwhile, in this environment, XRHealth made a bet: Payer reimbursements and provider contracts weren’t worth waiting around for. The safest path forward was working directly with patients as the provider of record.

Dr. Headset will see you now: When a patient begins working with XRHealth, the company pairs them with a remote clinician and mails them a headset. 

• The clinician then programs the headset to deliver whichever therapeutic program would be the best fit for the patient’s therapeutic needs. Currently, there are 150 such applications to choose from.

The question of billing: Of course, many patients aren’t paying out-of-pocket for VR therapeutics.

• In the U.S., where 40% of XRHealth’s current business is, the company relies on revenue from billing private and public insurers, relying on remote therapeutic monitoring codes and durable medical equipment reimbursements.

What do patients think?: Though some of the company’s patients come to XRHealth through clinician referrals and health plan partnerships, much of the business relies on DTC online advertising. 

• In speaking directly with patients, XRHealth has to convince them of the technology’s effectiveness as compared to other remote, digital therapeutic options they may be considering.
• To this challenge, XRHealth CEO Eran Orr has a bold response: “Google, Meta, and Apple decided for us already, just we haven’t gotten the memo, that phones are dead.”
• In other words, Orr and XRHealth are betting that Big Tech’s continued investment in immersive experiences will eventually spread through the cultural zeitgeist such that his company’s pitch to patients becomes even more easily accepted. 

As tech optimists, we sincerely hope Orr is right. Healthcare VR devices continue to impress us, as we believe the general public is not far behind. Beyond XRHealth, we’ll be continuing to check in on VR and XR applications for patient education, pain management, surgical training, and wellness, among others.