Josh Sackman - Building VR that retrains the brain to overcome chronic pain

Josh Sackman is the President and Cofounder of AppliedVR , a company whose products will be coming soon to a doctor near you.

What is AppliedVR? It is the only FDA authorized VR product to treat chronic pain. It’s meant to reduce our dependence on pain medications and provide a much more holistic option to anyone who suffers from long term pain.

How does one get into this line of work you might be wondering? I sat down with Josh to explore just that.

Josh Sackman grew up with congenital ligament and joint issues. When he was 8 years old, he tore his meniscus while bending down to pick up a toy. It required surgery which led to a painful staph infection. These types of problems would plague Josh for the remainder of his childhood. Injuries, hospitalizations, and surgeries left Josh in chronic pain, isolated, and full of anxiety. It was these experiences as a child that would later manifest in his work.

Thinking back to when he had his health issues, Josh realized that the doctors, nurses, teachers, physical therapists, and personal trainers shone the strongest light in his darkest moments. He realized that having an impact on someone else would be the most fulfilling work. After graduating from USC (and a quick stint working in the entertainment industry), Josh decided to get licensed as a personal trainer and moved to the Bay Area. He worked from the bottom up, selling gym memberships, changing light bulbs, and doing whatever was necessary to learn the gym business. However, after a few years, Josh felt like this was not his calling and started looking elsewhere for a new opportunity.

Josh had climbed a 20,000 foot mountain in La Paz, Bolivia on his 25th birthday. The quote, “If not now, when?” had been stuck in his head for months. Josh felt the need to do something radical with his life. There was nothing tying him down so Josh decided he would experience life abroad. He sold his car and other belongings on craigslist and moved to Argentina. Why did he choose Argentina? Because a guy he followed on social media lived there and seemed to have a good life.

Josh didn't speak much Spanish or had much money but was confident he could figure it out. Moving to Argentina turned out to be one of the best decisions of his life. Josh ended up meeting his girlfriend (now wife), worked on his first tech startup, got an MBA (in Spanish), and realized that his professional calling would be at the intersection of technology and health.

Josh had been following VR technology and knew of its vast potential. Because of VR’s immersive qualities, it makes you feel like you're somewhere else. Josh realized that you could actually retrain the brain by creating experiences to build empathy, which could then improve health outcomes. At the time, most VR companies were started by scientists in a lab without any understanding of product market fit. Josh believed that he could use existing VR technology and productize it to build a viable business.

Josh and his co-founder Matthew started AppliedVR in 2015. Matthew had previously built a successful advertising technology business. Josh would focus on the product and marketing. Matthew would focus on finance and distribution.

The first two years would best be described as having a solution in search of a problem. They felt like traveling salesman with their big briefcase and wired headset attached to a PC in tow. They could only demo the product in dark environments because light would throw off the sensors. It was extremely rudimentary and very different from the Oculus Quest we have on the market today. They relentlessly cold-called any potential customer and were successful in getting the technology in the hands of influential people, including the White House Chief of Staff, the Surgeon General, Cabinet Secretary, and multiple CEOs in the fortune 500.

At some point early on, Cedar Sinai Hospital showed interest in running a trial. They could see the value in providing VR as a form of treatment to their patients. They did a 3 month trial and it was a success! In the study, the VR goggles resulted in a 24% reduction in pain with hospitalized patients (https://mental.jmir.org/2017/1/e9/). AppliedVR received? a commercial contract from Cedars, which resulted in significant press and more importantly, inquiries from other health systems to try the technology. This was 2016, 2 years into the journey of the company and they finally had found product market fit.

After this major breakthrough, Josh and his co-founder got busy refining the product experience in order to optimize the technology for chronic pain management. The research expanded and they were able to reduce pain of hospitalized patients by 52% (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0219115), incredible results for a non-invasive treatment. AppliedVR has now treated over 60,000 patients in 1,500+ homes, 200+ hospitals across 10 countries. They have had 18 published studies and are scaling to meet the demands of healthcare systems all across the US. Their RelieVR unit is the first and only FDA authorized at home VR pain treatment on the market, demonstrating 42% reduction in pain for patients suffering with chronic lower back pain.

Josh sees the products used throughout healthcare as a tool to improve a range of pain, mental health, and behavioral health conditions. In the future, it will be prescribed as a replacement for medication. AppliedVR has already made a big impact on the healthcare world and they are just getting started. Josh is going to keep building AppliedVR until it becomes the primary treatment for pain management in the future.

?Learnings from talking with Josh

• Motion is better than direction - sometimes you need to just make action happen. Once you put yourself out there, have confidence that you will figure out the direction.?
• Energy flows towards passion - Josh spent a number of years figuring out what he wanted to do. Exploring his passion helped Josh find his purpose.?
• Show vulnerability - The healthcare space is intimidating and Josh wished he would have approached more meetings instead as domain experts but as newcomers looking for ways they could help.
• Your investors can make a huge difference early on. In the beginning they didn't know if they were a healthcare or a technology company. Many of their early investors came from the technology world and were looking for the company to hit metrics that were not relevant. Josh should have found more healthcare investors earlier to help them scale smarter.?
• In the beginning they said yes to everything. However, they should have had more strategic filters and a process for where they focused their time, energy, and capital.