On Virtual Reality and Chronic Pain
Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it authorized the marketing of EaseVRx “a prescription-use immersive virtual reality (VR) system that uses cognitive behavioral therapy and other behavioral methods to help with pain reduction in patients 18 years of age and older with diagnosed chronic lower back pain."
Note: EaseVRx is developed by Los Angelos based AppliedVR.
Dr. Christopher M. Loftus, director of the FDA’s Office of Neurological and Physical Medicine Devices, said “Pain reduction is a crucial component of living with chronic lower back pain. Today’s authorization offers a treatment option for pain reduction that does not include opioid pain medications when used alongside other treatment methods for chronic lower back pain.”
Dr. Beth Darnall, AppliedVR’s chief science advisor said: "Pain is often treated with a purely biomedical approach with key aspects of pain left untreated.
"Our research shows that VR can scale effective 'whole-person' chronic pain care that people can conveniently use in the comfort of their own home. As the immersive therapeutics category leader, AppliedVR is now best positioned to drive a paradigm shift towards accessible pain care."
"Matthew Stoudt, AppliedVR CEO, said, "Chronic low-back pain can be a debilitating and an incredibly costly problem, but now we're one step closer to achieving our goal of making immersive therapeutics the standard of care for pain."
OUR TAKE
Given that the impact of chronic pain is costly and opioid use is problematic, Applied VR’s offering is a welcome addition to the portfolio of available solutions.
Virtual reality use will continue to expand in health care - and current clinical uses included the treatment of 1) drug and alcohol abuse, 2) schizophrenia, 3) post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 4) generalized anxiety disorder, 5) depression, 6) ADHD, 7) anger management, 8) eating disorders/weight management, 9) learning disabilities, 10) stress management and 11) grief counseling
Medicine/health care is one of many industries that will be reshaped by virtual/augmented/mixed reality-based solutions.