Los Angeles-based company AppliedVR has successfully secured additional $29 million in funding, allowing it to seek FDA approval for its VR pain management technology, which promises to establish Therapeutic Virtual Reality (VRx) as a new standard of care for pain management.
The participants in the funding round include F-Prime Capital, JAZZ Venture Partners, Sway Ventures, GSR Ventures, Magnetic Ventures, and Cedars-Sinai. With their contributions, the total funds raised by AppliedVR have reached $35 million.
AppliedVR was founded in 2015, and it aims to build on decades of clinical research on virtual reality conducted across an array of disease areas, such as pain, stroke, behavioral health, and neurodegeneration.
“Chronic pain is one of the most common medical conditions in the world, yet it still is incredibly debilitating to patients, costly to the system, and complex to treat,” said Matthew Stoudt, co-founder and CEO of AppliedVR.
“While our mission has always been to demonstrate that VR can be a powerful analgesic in any setting, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a surge in demand for digital medicines like VR that can be delivered safely to patients in their own homes,” Stoudt added.
One of its solutions, called EaseVRx, has recently produced clinically meaningful improvement in multiple pain outcomes and had high participant satisfaction and engagement. EaseVRx is intended to be an intense eight-week training program delivered in virtual reality, and its purpose is to teach participants the foundations of chronic pain management.
“Our findings show that VR for chronic pain can provide effective on-demand, home-based pain care at scale. Home-based VR may improve the risk-benefit profile well above the current standard of care,” commented said Dr. Beth Darnall, AppliedVR chief science advisor.
To date, AppliedVR has collaborated with more than 200 healthcare providers, using its technology to help over 60,000 patients live more fulfilling lives.
