What You Should Know:
– AppliedVR, a Los Angeles, CA-based company advancing the next generation of immersive therapeutics, today announced $36 million in series B funding, bringing its total funding to $71M. The round, which included investments from F-Prime Capital, JAZZ Venture Partners, Sway Ventures and SVB Ventures, set up AppliedVR for rapid growth as it prepares for its decision from the FDA on its first de novo submission.
– Virtual reality provides an immersive experience that has been proven to improve the lives of people experiencing pain. The AppliedVR platform comprehensively addresses multiple pain indicators, leading to people reporting reductions in pain and associated interference of daily life both immediately and for several months after treatment is completed. People suffering from pain follow a science-backed, clinically validated curriculum of immersive VR programming to reduce their pain and help them learn skills for managing pain in the real world.
Relieving Chronic Pain with Therapeutic Virtual Reality
Pain, especially chronic pain, is one of the most complex and expensive health problems to address. Affecting approximately one-third of all Americans, chronic pain is estimated to cost as high as $635 billion each year, making it more expensive than cancer, heart disease and diabetes combined. Additionally, exacerbated by Covid-19, the chronic pain epidemic continues to fuel America’s opioid crisis, which has decimated communities and compounded the healthcare cost problem.
Founded in 2015, AppliedVR provides virtual reality-based treatments aimed at comprehensively treating chronic pain. Combining well-established cognitive-behavioral therapies with mindfulness exercises, the company’s EaseVRx solution recently became the first virtual reality (VR) prescription therapeutic to receive Breakthrough Device Designation from the FDA for treatment-resistant fibromyalgia and chronic intractable lower back pain.
Whether used in clinical settings or by patients on themselves at home, AppliedVR is building an unparalleled body of evidence that demonstrates its immersive therapeutics are effective and usable for patients, scalable for providers and viable for payer reimbursement. In February, AppliedVR released results from its pivotal eight-week randomized clinical trial that found the EaseVRx device produced “clinically meaningful” improvement in multiple pain outcomes and had high participant satisfaction and engagement.
Recent Peer-Reviewed, Research Results
The company also just announced results from a peer-reviewed, collaborative research project with S.O.L.V.E. Health Tech, a health equity incubation partner, embedded within the University of California, San Francisco. The research, published in the Journal for Medical of Internet Research (JMIR), studied how VR could be used for pain management in safety-net settings for vulnerable populations like Medicaid patients.
AppliedVR is already trusted by more than 200 of the world’s leading health systems and the technology has been used by more than 60,000 patients to date in pain management and wellness programs. After today’s investment, the company will prepare for EaseVRx’s full market launch after FDA approval, finish additional payer pilots, build out its product pipeline, conduct more clinical research, and continue building its VR pharmacy platform. AppliedVR is currently collaborating with Geisinger and Cleveland Clinic to advance separate NIDA-funding clinical trials that test VR as an opioid-sparing tool for acute and chronic pain.
“For too long, we’ve relied on the notion that people need to take pills or rely on surgery to feel better and lead a better quality of life. At AppliedVR, we’re building an unparalleled body of evidence for providers and payers to demonstrate that immersive therapeutics can fill the massive unmet need for patients who are frustrated by current treatment paradigms. And, we are starting with chronic pain, one of the most complex, costly conditions,” said Matthew Stoudt, co-founder and CEO of AppliedVR. “Our goal is to make immersive therapeutics accessible to everyone, and this funding will help further expand our body of evidence, infrastructure and distribution platform, enabling patients and providers to take advantage of this next-generation therapeutic — while also bringing down costs for payers.”
