Our startup mimerse works much like an indie game studio, but rather than producing games for entertainment, we develop therapeutic apps. This summer we were approached by the pharmacy chain Apotek Hjärtat, one of Sweden's most beloved and recognized brands with 400+ retail locations. They wanted our help to come up with a way to use technology to benefit the large group in society in some way experiencing pain. Naturally, we were up for the challenge.

Psychology influences how we experience pain. Sensations of pain can be manipulated by changing the way we think and feel. Virtual reality technology, by definition, creates an audiovisual illusion displacing the user into a digitally created world, something one study found to be as effective as narcotics in mitigating pain.

Why a Virtual Reality?

A wide range of VR content has been demonstrated to reduce pain in situations ranging from toothaches to serious burns.

Initially, our working hypothesis was that the observed positive effects were due not to the design of specific VR applications — but rather an inherent capability of virtual reality technology itself.

Despite numerous research projects and companies doing pain distraction in VR — we could not find any case of a publicly available app with this explicitly intended use.

But could most VR-content be a sufficient pain therapy solution? When we browsed the rest of commercially available VR-apps and experiences, we ruled out most of it for pain distraction purposes due to the following:

Not being immersive, distracting or engaging enough to be effective for most users (such as 360 video content).

Being at risk of creating negative emotions, such as a sense of failure, over stimulation or nausea.

Being hard to learn, requiring too much setup or complex interactions (not likely tolerated by a person in pain).

Demands of a virtual happy place

In order of priority we believe an ideal VR-application should aim to achieve:

Distraction from real world and real body by maximizing presence.

Low risk of inducing negative emotion.

Accessibility in terms of design, content, technology and platform.

Promote positive side effects such as relaxation, calmness and feeling of awe and wonder.

The Challenge

We decided to create something that satisfied the demands of those in pain that could be made available in our partner’s primary care clinics as well as free of charge.

Our biggest challenge, besides our tight budget, would be to appeal to, and work for, as many as different types of people, pain levels and situations possible.

Influences

We drew inspiration from a wide range of fields going into the project.

Patient using Snow World — the most famous VR pain relief application so far.

VR pain distraction research

Immersive virtual reality pain distraction was first explored by Hoffman & Patterson at the University of Washington Seattle and Harborview Burn Center.

The concept has been further developed commercially by companies like DeepStream VR (who also have compiled a list of relevant research literature) and others like AppliedVR .

The Calm room — spaces for emotional self care in Sweden's psychiatry

In common practice, a distressed person should ideally be in an environment lacking stimulation. However “The Calm Room” project, a success story in Swedish psychiatric hospitals, has demonstrated the therapeutic value of adding actively calming stimulus.

Guided meditation VR and virtual nature research

Spending time in nature has therapeutic value, and there are scientists investigating if the same effect can be reproduced with virtual nature.

Edgbaston’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital using virtual nature to alleviate pain through distraction therapy.

Users widely report therapeutic effects of Guided Meditation VR, an excellent meditation app that features non-threatening, beautiful and natural environments.

Open-world games and camping

From the start we wanted to work on maximizing presence and distraction by creating something that felt like a place. To capture this feeling we decided to include day, night and weather cycles and wildlife in our environment.

Few things are associated with escaping reality like camping. Camping provides a good cue to sit still and chill and gave us a reason to add a bunch of “stuff” around the user.

Swedish children’s books

For some users, sitting in virtual nature would not be enough. We decided to fill the scene with things to see and explore to add to the distraction.