Name: Watch Arianna Huffington Test Virtual Reality
Uploaded: 2016-11-01
Duration: 16 min 59 s
Description: Howard Rose, CEO of Deepstream VR, explains the medical implications.

[ MUSIC ] Hi, I am the CEO of DeepStream VR. My name is Howard Rose. And I want to share, we've had a lot of good discussion about what technology can bring. And I think that one of the big benefits of technology is really helping therapy. And VR, when people think of VR, they tend to think about, you know, the doctor's side of it and, you know, doctor training and simulations and all of that. And that's fantastic. But there's a lot of stuff that we can do to help the way the experience for patients. And that's been our focus and so I want to start off with a little demonstration and I have a very wonderful volunteer who I will ask to come to the stage. Will you please give a warm welcome to Arianna Huffington. [ APPLAUSE ] Hi. Hi, Ariana. So I want to tell the audience that this has not be rehearsed and so Ariana and I just met backstage but thank you so much for For being a part of this, and so let me explain what is gonna happen here to you. And, actually, if you could come over to this side, that would be great. And fantastic, so we're going to do a little pain test. And Ariana how would you describe your sort of Level of pain tolerance. Right now I feel completely pain free. I know you're about to change that. Okay. I also have masochistic tendencies so but I'm very happy to volunteer anything in [ UNKNOWN ] is involved in. Well thank you. So what we have here is An ice bucket full of ice water and what we're gonna do is to ask you to put your left hand into there and we're going to, you can stop at any time, but we're gonna stop you at a minute, at the most. And we're gonna see how that pain experience feels for you. And then I have this wonderful little heat lamp here that is going to, okay, they've done some interesting things here. I'm gonna pull this. And This is technology demos and I will just tell you that I've been in VR for a long time. And, and a portable VR system when I started, required two people to put it into the van. So we've come, we've come along way we're just really wonderful thing. So if you put your left hand in there and we're going to start. Gonna stop Yes. Go. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Do you want me to give you a running commentary? [ LAUGH ] If you'd like to, please. Like, so far so good. [ LAUGH ] And I can handle that. I'd like to have a countdown like when you're doing reps at the gym and they tell you how many more seconds do I have left. Well, you are doing great. But he's not telling me how much time I have left. How would you say you're feeling right now? I would say I'm feeling less good than when I started. [ LAUGH ] But tolerable, tolerable. If you would only tell me how much time I have. [ LAUGH ] Okay, so we would go maybe another, how about another twenty seconds? How does that feel? I could handle that. But you know, you have to realize I'm a tough Greek peasant girl. [ LAUGH ] So we can take pain. So on a scale of zero to ten, right now, where zero is no pain, and ten is the worst pain that you can possibly imagine, where would you say that [ INAUDIBLE ]? I would say about six. About a six. Okay, I think that's good. Why don't we take you out. And can we have a round of applause as we bring her back. [ APPLAUSE ] This is good. This is phase one. And then we have the very, the lovely, the heat lamp. So we like to take care of people here. So, how would you describe your experience in the ice water in terms of What's going on in your head, and how did you handle the pain? So I handled the pain by knowing that at one minute you would take my hand out. So I knew there was a limit to it. If you had not given me a limit, it would've been much harder. I might've screamed or pulled my hand out, but Knowing that there's a quick end to it made it tolerable. And have you been through painful medical procedures before? My most painful medical procedure was taking my tonsils out at six, I still remember it. The only good thing was they gave me a lot of ice cream afterwards. Ice cream. That's a great medicine. So how are you feeling here? Are you feeling warm? Do you think you're kinda back, or? Almost, yeah. Okay, we'll keep you going here. So in terms of, you've got your new company that you're going, that you're developing. And healthcare And how do you see technology fitting into that? It's a huge part of what we're doing. And as it's a huge part of everything around here, not just healthcare but health and wellness, way beyond wearable devices that we've all gotten use to. There's so much Amazing new technology around sleep, around meditation, around recharging, and of course then moving beyond those things into the medical field. Great. [ CROSSTALK ] So are you good? Okay, so we're going to go to phase two here. And phase two Is our application, so we have an application that we, our work is bringing this VR technology into hospitals, and eventually into consumer's homes to help them handle pain. And that happens in an acute pain context where they're going through a procedure where they don't necessarily know when the end is, unfortunately. So we can help them. They get immersed in the virtual experience and then they get engaged. And I'm gonna talk a little bit later about the data that we've been able to gather through the course of Doing this in many clinical situations and with different populations. So let's give this a shot. Now here. Let's see. We're going to do this. So, if you can put that on So this is our application called cool. And how are you doing? Does that feel okay? Yes. Okay. Great. Now okay so this one, so we're going to, we're going to have you you can look all around. What do you see? A lot of stars. Okay. Excellence. The sky, Can everybody else see what I'm seeing? Yes, they can. So they're seeing, and we're gonna start on our little journey here. So that's cool. And if I can get your right hand. So this is our fish cannon. And we are playing people with, do you see an otter over there to your left? Yes. Okay and I'm going to send you off into the music. Things we're not going to hear the music but we're going to be talking. Can I start playing? Yes go. So this is kind of a playground. It's open ended. You can go and have fun. There's lots of things to do in cool. But here we go. And I'm gonna, there she goes. She's having a lot of fun here. Okay, so, [ BLANK_AUDIO ] So these are somewhat noise cancelling headphones. So I can talk. So yea, h in the procedure situation. We don't know how long they're gonna be using the application. And we don't know how Kind of what their pain tolerance is. So we built applications that kind of work for a broad population. And this is one of them, and it's sort of a playground. So, we allow them to explore, and there's lots of levels to the game, so that they can. Kind of go through different experiences. Right now we're in winter, we move into spring where there are cherry blossoms falling. And I can share some of the data that we've been able to find from applications like Cool. But we see a real change in what happens in people's brains. And we have some FMRI data that I'm going to Going to share with you. So, okay. How are you doing? Great. I think we're [ LAUGH ] -- see this is the problem. She has too much fun. Okay we're gonna bring you out of there. The science Part. Okay, so I'm gonna do this. And you can hold that. And I'm gonna take you out of here. This is real live science here. Okay, so can you take the headset off- Yes. Aranna? Okay, so on a scale of zero to ten again, how was that pain level for you? That was amazing. It was probably not more than two. I had no concern about how much more time was left. Like at the beginning remember, I kept asking you to tell me How much more time did I have? And I was so busy, playing with the fish. [ LAUGH ] And looking around. But I was not at all concerned about the time. Well great. And thank you, and so can we have a round of applause for my fabulous. [ APPLAUSE ] Hope we're here. Thank you. Are we going to take this on the road now? [ LAUGH ] We are. Actually that's what I'm going to talk to you about afterwards but thank you -- Thank you. Yes, we really appreciate it. [ APPLAUSE ] So that's just a short demo here. And so I want to talk a little bit about what your brain on VR. What we've been able to learn about ourselves, and the way we react to pain. From this research that's been going on for. Quite a long time. And there's been a lot of published papers and things that I can share with people if you're interested. So please find me afterwards. So for patients in these situations they're really fighting three different problems. One is anxiety, that feeling of helplessness which Ariana mentioned. And also that the experience of pain. And we know that the feeling of anxiety and helplessness contributes to that transformation of pain into suffering. And so VR is a way to intervene into that whole process. And if you look at. What's happening in the brain. So this is data that compares no VR to VR, exactly what you saw here. Induced pain and looking at what happens in the brain and when our brains are subjected to stress and pain, we see activity in these areas. So the visceral senses, the body map That is our conception of ourself. The pain signal transmission. A lot of stuff is flying around, and that emotional pain component is really active. So when you compare this to what is happening With VR, what we see is those areas of the brain, that's the Insula, the Thalamus, the ACC. Those areas of the brain get much quieter. I don't know if you can see this on the monitors, but there's a dramatic difference. It's not a small difference, it's a dramatic difference. And what's really exciting is that, Brain activity moves to other parts of your brain that are associated with cognition and coping and resilience. Now that's a great picture of what we're seeing both in terms of self report and also kind of these objective measures of pain. So I just want to share a little data. So this is using an application that we developed with researchers at the University of Washington. Hunter Hoffman, Tom Furness, David Patterson. And we've been part of that team for a long time. So this is a study that looks at specifically No treatment, opioids, VR and VR plus opioids. And I'm just gonna talk about the no treatment versus opioids and VR. So, on a couple of measures, so pain unpleasantness. We know that this has a big effect on people's sort of perceptions of how bad a medical procedure is. Pain, unpleasantness. VR is doing better than opioids. And this is compared again to the no treatment control. Time thinking about pain. Catastrophising, worrying about it, is dramatically less. So we're minus 48 percent and 10 percent for opioids. And this is my favorite. The amount of fun. [ LAUGH ] We're a thousand times better. And I think what this talks about is, you know, patient satisfaction at a certain level. But we're also, I think, indicated here is that opioids sort of rob you of your, of the fun of life and that's really problematic. So at least in this case, VR worked better than the drugs. For chronic pain, we're seeing benefits for 94 %, 92 % of the patients before comparisons from before during to after. And there's an amazing halo effect that that benefit lasts for hours afterward. And so we have a real indication that VR is doing much more than just Distraction. A distraction kind of effect with end when you stop the distraction. But this is actually much more a keen to what you see in cognitive behavioral therapy. And also for bio feedback and those kinds of purchase. So, as a general framework, I think it's interesting to think of VR as a type of amino therapy for your brain. So [ UNKNOWN ] therapy uses the body's natural immune response to prevent or treat disease, and this is a way to intervene. We all have the capacity to change the focus and to do a lot of things on our own. VR is a way to kinda unlock that capacity. And so we have a number of channels that we can do that virtual reality. I just wanna go over this real quick. One is self regulation, this concept of immersion takes us out of that treatment room and into another context. Where we can get immersed and help ourselves, self regulate or down regulate. It's active and creative. That gets at this feeling of helplessness. It's not a passive experience. And that is a very important thing for the outcome. This sensory learning and manipulating the body map is really key we think to the mechanisms of action behind this. And it incorporates mental strategies. And we can build resilience and bring in biosensors. And other forms of interactive components to make it a close look by our feed back system. So, we see a huge amount of potential for using the art in pain, in mental health and for treating post medic stress, or phobia, or anxiety, depression and focus on specific treatments as well So that's a short tour of your brain on VR. [ MUSIC ]

Howard Rose, CEO of Deepstream VR, explains the medical implications.