I&T Solution

Solution Description

Patients with mental health problems have been treated primarily with drugs and a variety of verbal therapeutic treatments such as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). Treatment tools are very limited. Effectiveness of verbal therapeutic treatments is highly dependent on skills of individual therapist. Side effects of drug treatments are sometimes not tolerated by some patients. These are the problems faced by therapists in general in treating patients with mental illnesses.

Virtual Reality, VR in short, is a technology that reveals its power in offering VR users a sense of immersion in a target environment without actually having the person physically present in that environment. Plenty of academic research has been conducted on how VR can be used as a means of therapeutic treatment for patients with mental health problems. The system to be developed in this project will deploy VR to create various treatment scenarios for patients of mental health problems elevating effectiveness of the therapists' treatment.

The project has a cross-disciplinary and innovative nature deploying various technologies such as VR, gaming, video streaming, software engineering and psychological therapy. It is innovative in that it creates a new treatment paradigm for medical practitioners in treating their patients besides using verbal CBT and drugs, not to mention that VR by itself is an innovative technology. This system could also become a disruptive technological product such that it could become a standard equipment in every psychiatric treatment facilities in the world, a whole new market that does not exist up till now.

There are only a few VR therapy systems known around the globe. Most of them are developed in the USA and Europe. New entrant to this market faces little competition at this moment especially in Asia. The competitive advantage of this system will be a). The first or maybe the second VR therapy system developed locally in HK. b) The system will be co-developed with local medical institutions and academia on requirements gathering and clinical trials ensuring it is clinically effective on treating local patients. c) The system will also be co-developed with China and Taiwan medical academia on clinical trials ensuring treatment effectiveness for patients of these territories.