Heka VR in 2022

Heka is only 5 months old but we have been very busy this year!??

Heka VR (formerly known as The Challenge Project) got accepted into the acceleration programs for Venture Lab at BioInnovation Institute.

Our team has grown a lot since then. First, Katalin Vikuk joined to help us navigate the regulatory landscape, and then Helena Blazincic came to lead the clinical trial set up around the world. Ana Mateos joined us as our intern and despite working only one day a week she has contributed a great amount of value to Heka VR. Andras Csikos has been with us for 3 months making sure that Heka’s code is bug-free and constantly evolves. Katarina Michelova came to help with grant writing to fund all the trials Helena is setting up, and Alia Bashir joined the team to provide technical support to our research sites and future customers.?

We were featured in the media:

In an article in B?rsen our CEO Simon Max Bloch Lajboschitz talked about our VR avatar therapy solution to help patients that are diagnosed with Schizophrenia.

"We're nowhere near curing schizophrenia, but if we can put a very powerful tool in the toolbox, we've come a long way." - Simon Max Bloch Lajboschitz.

We were accepted for the NOME mentorship and got three amazing people to help us navigate medical device world: Anki Malmborg Hager, Tomas Eriksson, and Liselotte Hyveled.

An open access article has been recently published about the clinical testing of Heka VR’s ‘Avatar therapy’ solution designed and carried out by the VIRTU Research Group.

We are close to finishing recruitment into our randomised clinical trial (#rct ) that we are working on with the Virtu Research group and 3 regions of Denmark: Region Syddanmark, Region Nordjylland, and the Region Hovedstad. It is funded by the Innovation Fund of Denmark.

We started a joint project with Swinburne University of Technology to test a remote version of Avatar Therapy, led by Associate Professor, Neil Thomas.

We are opening further market access for Heka VR across the EU, Israel, Turkey, Canada, USA, Singapore, and India.

Thanks to Healthcare DENMARK and AdESM we were visited by a delegation of the French Psychiatric Association to learn about the #innovation we bring to Danish #psychiatry and #MentalHealthCare. Together with Mads Lopes from Khora we presented a number of products that are currently on the market or being developed, such as #khoraexposure and #hekavr.

Our project manager, Katalin Vikuk talked about how Heka VR can help people with schizophrenia at the Connected Healthcare Forum in #dusseldorf at the #medica2022 trade fare. ?

We took part in the? Women in Immersive Technologies Europe at the showroom of Khora Virtual Reality organised by Katrine Konyher, where Katalin Vikuk made an inspiring talk about how #immersivetechnology can revolutionise mental health care while Helena Blazincic demonstrated HEKA VR for the audience. ?

Together with the @Khora Virtual Reality team, we were there at the First Annual Digital Psychiatry Conference organised by the Center for Digital Psykiatri in Odense. #digital is the #future, and the results across Denmark and beyond strongly support this pathway!

Follow us in 2023 too because we have a lot more to come!