VA Provides Veterans with Immersive, VR Treatment for Chronic Lower Back Pain

What You Should Know:

– AppliedVR, an immersive therapeutics (ITx) pioneer advancing a novel, virtual reality-based approach to medicine, today announced a contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide its FDA-authorized RelieVRx (formerly EaseVRx) solution to select Veterans impacted by chronic lower back pain (CLBP).

– AppliedVR was awarded the contract with the VHA Innovation Ecosystem, a division of the VA that discovers, evaluates, and spreads mission-driven innovations that advance care delivery for Veterans. The two organizations previously collaborated to deliver VR-based solutions that could comfort Veterans in hospice (palliative care) and help improve the quality of life of Veterans experiencing general chronic pain, stress and anxiety in a variety of healthcare settings.

Helping Veterans Living with Chronic Back Pain

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) provides care to more than 9 million Veterans, making it the largest integrated healthcare system in the U.S., and more than 50 percent of Veterans receiving care at VHA facilities across the country are affected by chronic pain. AppliedVR and the VHA Innovation Ecosystem share a common vision to transform chronic pain care for our nation’s Veterans by enabling more access to non pharmacological, noninvasive treatment options like virtual reality (VR).

Through this effort, healthcare providers at 18 VA facilities will have the ability to prescribe the RelieVRx program to Veterans for use in their homes. RelieVRx is the first and only FDA-authorized in-home immersive VR pain treatment indicated as an adjunctive treatment for CLBP. The eight-week program has been clinically demonstrated to decrease pain severity and pain interference in the lives of people experiencing CLBP. In a recent clinical trial follow-up study, the RelieVRx system also was shown to deliver durable effects six months after treatment.

“Chronic pain is challenging to treat—historically, pharmacological interventions like opioids and NSAIDS, or invasive procedures like injections or surgeries have failed to provide relief for too many patients, leaving them a bleak outlook. Current guidelines call for integrated pain treatment, and immersive therapeutics like RelieVRx provide multidimensional therapy in a single, easy-to-use device. Our evidence-based immersive therapeutics can help Veterans manage their chronic lower back pain by addressing the biopsychosocial aspects of the condition,” said Matthew Stoudt, CEO and co-founder of AppliedVR. “Working with the VHA Innovation Ecosystem represents one of the highest honors for our company, because U.S. Veterans are heroes, and

they deserve the world’s best healthcare that includes the most advanced technology-driven solutions.”

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