Overview
Ever since his first experience with VR, Andre Bollaert has seen it as a superpower, “What VR is able to do is so engaging that people learn that they have the ability to perceive things in a different way.”
Andre has a long history of working with organizations solving complex community issues, especially in education. His experiences give him a deep understanding of the challenges children face when dealing with traumatic circumstances. This led him to an opportunity at Invincikids, a non-profit whose mission is to reduce the fear and anxiety that children face in clinical settings – using immersive technology as a distraction.
Driven by their team of experts and research, their goal is to distribute this technology and provide open access for all. Today, Invincikids manages over 400 devices across 30 countries and works with over 50 top Children’s Hospitals and Research Institutions.
About Invincikids
Invincikids began when a group of Stanford pediatric anesthesiologists sought to reduce the trauma that children went through before surgery. They noticed that providing children with engaging, distracting content helps soothe them before undergoing anesthesia for surgeries and other procedures.
Their research began with BERT (Bedside Entertainment and Relaxation Theater), a projector strapped to a gurney that displayed engaging content. The results were clear – children were less afraid and more cooperative before clinical procedures. In some cases, it removed the need for anesthesia altogether. They soon pivoted to leveraging VR to engage children and it became apparent that they had to share this technology with the world. “It’s like the next level of engagement, in a really positive way” Andre describes.
As Invincikids sought to implement the immersive technology, they faced a major hurdle: how to effectively manage hundreds of VR headsets in various clinical environments, many in underdeveloped regions.
Invinicikids discovered that there’s widespread confusion about VR and whether it’s safe to introduce it in a clinical setting. There’s a depth of research demonstrating how effective immersive technology is when it comes to engaging patients, but little is understood about how to actually implement it. And when VR is conflated with social media or an unrestricted phone, the hesitancy to introduce it in pediatric care is a lot more understandable.
Educators looking to add VR to their curriculum might recognize these objections. The power of immersive technology in education is clear, but the same question comes up – how does one deploy this transformative technology without being able to control it? ManageXR was born to put these concerns to rest and enable organizations to use VR with confidence.
ManageXR Turns VR Headsets into Powerful Clinical Tools
Kiosk Mode
Being able to limit children’s access to specifically curated content is essential to using VR devices in a clinical setting. “If you don’t have the ManageXR kiosk, you are not going to be able to deploy VR…. there’s just no option there.” Andre describes. With kiosk mode or the ManageXR Home Screen, patients only have access to approved, therapeutic content. This ability to control the patients’ experience is a key part of adoption for many of Invinickids’ partners.
“Having a tool like ManageXR is extraordinarily valuable, both for being able to share our content, but also to be able to curate the content so it’s age appropriate and that children aren’t able to access things that we don’t want them to access.” Andre says.
Flexible and Easy Set Up
Invincikids’ partner hospitals have varying levels of expertise and familiarity when it comes to immersive technology. “I was a little terrified that I was going to be spending all my time teaching people how to use VR…having an MDM that’s pretty easy to use, it goes pretty easy.” Andre describes.
ManageXR allows for the flexibility to introduce VR to any type of organization, regardless of technological maturity. It’s simple enough that even non-English speakers can follow the interface and get fully set up on their own. For those that are new to VR or that require extra guidance, ManageXR’s world-class support team provides 1:1 onboarding and quick response times.
This enables Invincikids to bring their solution to even the most remote areas of the world, like rural areas in Kenya and Guatemala. Devices are set up to be used out-of-the-box and then shipped to end users. There’s little requirement for Wi-Fi to keep ManageXR running, allowing this immersive technology to be used in extremely remote and underdeveloped areas.
“We can set these headsets up and we can send them. They don’t need to be connected to any infrastructure. As long as they can charge the devices, they can use them,” Andre shares.
Remote Streaming
One of the biggest challenges to clinical adoption of VR devices is not being able to see what’s going on inside of the headset. With Remote Streaming, clinicians can see what their patients are experiencing in real-time and use remote commands to take control of the user experience.
“Being able to see what’s in the headset and do remote launching, that’s a big shift to be able to make the user experience be the clinician’s experience, not the person in the headset,” Andre says.
Build your program with ManageXR
ManageXR continues to be a critical part of Invincikids. Without the ability to control content and easily prepare devices, this technology would not be able to be used in a clinical setting. By working with ManageXR, Invincikids continues to pave the way to achieve their goals of bringing this technology to patients around the world.
As Invincikids grows, the process for bringing on new partner hospitals has gone from 12-16 months down to 30-45 days. “ManageXR is a huge piece of that”, says Andre. “As soon as I am able to convince them that the headsets are locked down…that puts them to rest.”.
Get started with ManageXR today!