fbpx

Can Virtual Reality Help Autistic Children Navigate the Real World?


This article is part of Upstart, a series about startups leveraging new science and technology.

Vijay Ravindran has always been fascinated by technology. He led the team that founded and launched Amazon Prime at Amazon. He later joined the Washington Post as a digital chief, where he advised Donald E. Graham on the sale of the paper to his former boss, Jeff Bezos, in 2013.

In late 2015, Mr. Ravindran was ending his time at the renamed Graham Holdings Company. But his main focus was on his then 6-year-old son, who was being treated for autism.

“Then something incredible happened,” said Mr. Ravindran.

Mr. Ravindran was walking around with a virtual reality headset when his son wanted to try it out. After spending 30 minutes using the headset in Google Street View, the boy went to the playroom and started animating what he was doing in virtual reality.

“It was one of the first times I saw him act like that,” said Mr. Ravindran. “Finally there was a lightbulb moment.”

Like many autistic children, Mr. Ravindran’s son struggled with role-playing and other social skills. His son’s ability to translate his virtual reality experience into the real world sparked an idea. A year later, he started a company called Mr. Ravindran. floraDeveloping virtual reality classes designed to assist behavioral therapists, speech therapists, special educators, and parents working with autistic children.

The idea of ​​using virtual reality to help people with autism has been around for a while, but Mr Ravindran said the widespread availability of commercial virtual reality headsets since 2015 has enabled research and commercial deployment on a much larger scale. Floreo has developed nearly 200 virtual reality lessons designed to help children develop their social skills and train for real-world experiences, such as crossing the street or choosing where to sit in the school cafeteria.

Last year, the company delivered 17,000 lessons to customers in the United States as the pandemic exploded demand for telehealth and distance education services. Autism experts believe the company’s flexible platform could go global in the near future.

This is because the demand for behavior and speech therapy, as well as other forms of intervention for autism, is so great. It can take months for a diagnosis of autism to be made – a crucial time in a child’s development when therapeutic intervention can be vital. And this type of therapy can be costly and require huge investments of time and resources by parents.

The Floreo system requires an iPhone (version 7 or higher) and a VR headset (a low-end model costs between $15 and $30), as well as an iPad that can be used by a parent, teacher, or coach. person or remotely. The cost of the program is about $50 per month. (Floreo is currently working to enable insurance reimbursement and has received Medicaid approval in four states.)

As a child wears a headset and navigates the virtual reality lesson, the coach, who can be a parent, teacher, therapist, counselor or personal assistant, monitors and interacts with the child via iPad.

Lessons cover a wide variety of situations, such as visiting the aquarium or going to the grocery store. Most classes involve teaching autistic children who have difficulty interpreting nonverbal cues to interpret body language.

Autism self-advocates argue that behavioral therapy to treat autism is controversial among people with autism, that it is not a disease to be cured, and that therapy is often imposed on autistic children by their non-autistic parents or guardians. Behavioral therapy, they say, can harm or punish children for behaviors like fidgeting. Instead of conditioning people with autism to behave like neurotypical individuals, they argue that society should be more welcoming of them and the different ways they experience the world.

“Most of the mismatch between autistic people and society is the fault of society, not the fault of autistic people,” said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. “People should be taught to interact with people with different disabilities.”

Mr Ravindran said Floreo respects all voices in the autistic community where needs differ. He noted that although Floreo is used by many behavioral health providers, it has been deployed in a variety of contexts, including schools and homes.

“The Floreo system is designed to be positive and fun, while creating positive reinforcement to help develop skills that will help adapt to the real world,” said Mr. Ravindran.

In 2017, Floreo received a $2 million fast-track grant from the National Institutes of Health. The company first tests whether autistic children can tolerate headphones, then conducts a randomized control trial to test the method’s usefulness in helping autistic people interact with the police.

Early results have been promising: According to a study Published in the journal Autism Research (one of the authors was Mr. Ravindran), 98 percent of children completed their classes, alleviating the concerns of autistic children with sensory sensitivities being resistant to headphones.

Ms. Gross said she saw potential in virtual reality classes in helping people rehearse unfamiliar situations, such as Floreo’s crossover class. “There are parts of Floreo to get really excited about: being driven by the airport, tricked or treated—a social story for something that doesn’t happen that often in someone’s life,” she said. course for medical procedures.

However, he has questioned the behavioral therapy industry’s overall emphasis on using emerging technologies to teach social skills to people with autism.

A second randomized control trial using telehealth, conducted by Floreo using another NIH grant, continues in hopes of showing Floreo’s approach to be as effective as face-to-face coaching.

But it was these early successes that convinced Mr. Ravindran to commit to the project fully.

“There were people who were really excited,” he said. “When I started showing families what we had developed, people would give me big hugs. They would start crying because there was someone working on such a high-tech solution for their kids.”

Clinicians using the Floreo system say that the virtual reality environment makes it easier for children to focus on the skill taught in classes, as opposed to the real world, where they can become overwhelmed with sensory stimuli.

Celebrate the Children, a private nonprofit school for children with autism and related difficulties in Denville, NJ, hosted one of Floreo’s first pilots; The school’s co-founder and managing director, Monica Osgood, said the school continues to use the system.

He said that wearing the virtual headset can be very empowering for students because they can control their surroundings with light movements of their heads. “Virtual reality is definitely a real gift for our students that we will continue to use,” he said.

Kelly Rainey, director of special education at the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities in Ohio, said her organization has used Floreo over the past year to help students with life and social skills. Her colleague Holly Winterstein, an early childhood intervention specialist, said the tools are often more effective than the talking cards used by therapists. The office set out with two headsets, but quickly purchased equipment for each of its eight staff.

“I see endless possibilities,” said Mrs. Winterstein.

“Floreo’s social skills stick,” said Michea Rahman, a speech-language pathologist who focuses on the underserved population (and one Floreo client) in Houston. The system is “probably one of the best or best social skills tools I’ve ever worked with.” (He added that 85 percent of his patients are Medicaid-based.)

The company has raised nearly $6 million to date. Investors include LifeForce Capital, a venture capital firm focused on healthcare software, and the Autism Impact Fund, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in companies that address neurological conditions. (Mr Ravindran declined to specify whether the company was profitable.)

For Mr. Ravindran, the company has become a mission. “When I started exploring virtual reality as a form of therapy, I didn’t know whether it was going to be a hobby project or a business where I would invest some money and hire a few people and then walk out. to do something else.”



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

(0)