Healthy Mind is an evidence-based therapeutic VR-tool that alleviates pain and anxiety, reduces drug consumption and enhances patients’ recovery. The experiences are based on advanced psychological principles like medical hypnosis, breath control and relaxing music. Innovative medical device transports patients into a 3D visual and auditory experience to journey through the natural environment of their choice. Based in France, Healthy Mind is already in use in numerous hospitals in multiple EU countries. Healthy Mind decided to team up with MedScaler to perform an Market Validation in the Dutch healthcare market.
In order to give more insights about this inspiring innovation, MedScaler interviewed Reda Khouadra, one of the Co-founders and CMO at Healthy Mind.
How is your innovation revolutionising healthcare?
“Our medical device is successfully integrated in multiple healthcare facilities in France (such as the AP-HP), Switzerland (such as the CHUV) and Belgium. We perceive significative results in pain and anxiety relief. On average, we are sitting at 67% of anxiety reduction and 76% of pain reduction in our post-commercialisation follow-up. Also, we have an excellent performance in various medical departments like anaesthesia(pre/per/post-operation), emergency, oncology, palliative and paediatrics. Our aim is to improve patients’ well-being but also to reduce drug consumption (on average 66% reduction of anxiolytics) and hospitalisation time. For instance, several general anaesthesia are transformed into local anaesthesia thanks to our device, which allows our clients to save time in the operating room and post-anaesthesia care units, and therefore reduce the associated costs.”
What is your founding story? How did you come up with this innovation?
“I come from a family where pain is the norm; my parents suffer from chronic pain and they arrived at a point where even medication doesn’t do much anymore. Seeing my parents as well as other family members suffer constantly, impacted me heavily when I was young and, lo and behold, oriented me towards healthcare. Six years ago, the emergence of virtual reality sparked the idea of Healthy Mind in my mind and I decided, three years after, to embark on this adventure with my trusted associates Timothée and Malo. Nowadays, this technology is accessible to the public and is becoming a real opportunity in healthcare.”
Why are you interested in entering/exploring the Dutch market?
“The main reasons of tackling The Netherlands is its openness to innovation and the reputation and quality of its healthcare system while being one of top 10 economies in Europe.”
What is the next milestone for your company?
“Our next milestone is to start our medico-economic pilot study in The Netherlands while launching our commercialisation in parallel using the metrics we collected in France, Switzerland and Belgium.”
What is the most valuable tip about innovating healthcare that every entrepreneur could learn from?
“When you are innovating in healthcare, the basis would be to prepare scientific evidence, it is the norm. However, many start-ups wait too long before starting to prepare ROI metrics that are critical for a successful commercialisation. Therefore, my advice would be to start preparing ROI metrics as soon as you can (which is today not tomorrow).”
What research, pilot or trials do you currently have ongoing to become an evidence based intervention?
Apart from the post commercialisation follow-up data. We currently have 5 on-going studies with renowned healthcare establishments:
• Reduction of preoperative anxiety in paediatrics
• Pain reduction in emergencies
• Reduction of pain, anxiety and sedative dose for pacemaker operations in cardiology
• Reduction of pre-operative anxiety in intensive care
• Reduction of pain and morphine consumption during acute attacks in sickle cell patients in emergencies
In your opinion, why MedTech and Digital Health are so important?
“The use of digital health will fundamentally change how perceive healthcare; One example would be to help in early disease prediction that will lead to behavioural changes that prevent and eliminate system costs. Medtech brings bold advances in a broad range of technologies like medical devices, in vitro diagnostics and imaging solutions can now solve health challenges that were previously considered insurmountable. But medtech is doing more than that. It is radically changing the way healthcare is delivered, the way professionals treat us, and the way we experience healthcare.”
Where do you see your innovation in 5 years?
“We believe that each patient is different. Therefore, in 5 years, our innovation will be able to dynamically adapt depending on the states (real-time brain activity and other biological measures) and psychological profiles of patients to deliver a personalised experience that will have bigger impact and polyvalence. We have already started tackling the challenges with experts in these domains.”
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