Project Vae is a non-profit community interest company that is striving to use virtual reality to improve the mental health & wellbeing of people living in care homes & hospices.
Many of our daily conversations are centred around personal experience and this can become a barrier for people within the care system who (for various physical/mental health reasons) may not have many new or shared experiences in their daily lives. By striving to deliver new experiences for vulnerable and elderly people we will help them to reconnect both with each other and the wider community.
We will be launching our service in late 2022 - early 2023. The service will provide our in-house produced VR video experiences via our android app. The app will essentially be a basic version of Netflix that hosts our VR video experiences. Care institutions will firstly purchase our VR hardware bundle, then once that has arrived, they will subscribe to the VAE android app via a monthly or yearly payment.
In the summer of 2021, we conducted a research study using Project Vae with patients in a local hospice. The study was in collaboration with Keele University & The Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and we observed a positive effect on depression, anxiety, loneliness and stress.
By showcasing these immersive videos in locations that patients/residents may never have even dreamed of seeing or places they may have visited before, we also learned that reliving those places can bring back positive memories for viewers.
The study also taught us that individual experience brought collective benefits such as stimulating new topics of conversation with partners, friends and relatives, as well as building relationships that could provide additional empathy and support. We also wish to use this technology to help vulnerable and elderly people to continue to live fulfilling lives regardless of their physical or mental barriers.
