The Virtual Hippo

Virtual reality software intended to decrease stress and anxiety through the use of hypnotherapy techniques
An EPIC project
Older woman using virtual reality headset while sitting ion yoga mat in her living room.
Virtual reality isn’t just for gamers – the technology has a number of exciting potential applications, including managing pain, stress, and anxiety from the comfort of your own home. EPIC teamed up with Rebecca Jackson – expert in immersive psychological therapies – to explore this avenue with The Virtual Hippo. The company is developing virtual reality software that will help people manage their conditions using hypnotherapy techniques.
Currently in the early stages of development, the goal is for the app to be endorsed by the NHS and integrated into high-stress workplaces to reduce stress and prevent burnout.

Background 

There’s nothing like a global pandemic to increase stress and anxiety levels; the Office of National Statistics estimates that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the equivalent of 19 million adults in Great Britain are reporting high levels of anxiety. Continuous stress can lead to ‘burnout’, the result of psychological, mental and emotional exhaustion (Billeter-Koponen & Fredén, 2005), which is also associated with depression, lowered immunity, musculoskeletal issues and gastrointestinal infections (Donnelly, 2014; Lin, Lin, Cheng, Wu, & Ou‐Yang, 2016). Current research demonstrates the urgent need worldwide for mitigation of the psychological effects of the coronavirus pandemic (Shah et al. 2021).
The Virtual Hippo founder, Rebecca Jackson, wanted to address these issues by investigating the role that VR might be able to play in offering home-based solutions to stress reduction, increased mental wellness, and pain reduction.
Her VR technology works by providing the user with a 8–10-minute experience of sitting in a beautiful natural virtual environment, using proven techniques that reduce stress-related activity in the brain and transform perception through immersive VR.

Everything in the VR environment has an underlying psychological reason why it’s there, right down to the colours that we use, the plants, the trees, and the birds, and it’s been thoughtfully done so that when you take the headset off it’s not a jarring experience. The whole thing is set up to be extremely gentle, but pretty powerful.

How has EPIC supported The Virtual Hippo?

A Challenge Fund grant of £4,000 enabled Rebecca to purchase equipment and conduct robust, early-stage research into attitudes regarding the use of VR in a healthcare context. EPIC researcher Leonie Cooper helped The Virtual Hippo organise focus groups with a wide demographic mix to obtain valuable end-user feedback. The results were encouraging, with many participants expressing interest in the technology and finding the VR environment easier to relax in than other settings. Rebecca has been able to use this research to strengthen additional grant applications and enable future collaboration with Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust for pre-clinical and clinical trials.
“That’s been really important because it gives credibility to the research and it means people know I’m doing it properly, to university standards,” she said.
In addition to helping Rebecca with her research and development process, EPIC facilitated a referral to ORCHA to ensure The Virtual Hippo meets nationally recognised digital health standards, as well as funding a trip to Slush 2022 in Helsinki so that Rebecca could network with potential investors for her project.
“I had the most brilliant experience at Slush and have some really exciting leads and contacts for my company,” she said.
Rebecca is delighted by the support and assistance she has received from everyone on the EPIC team:
“I absolutely could not have done it without EPIC,” she said. “And it hasn’t just been financial support - the courses I’ve been offered, the consultancy, use of the EPICentre, and just feeling like there was somebody interested in what I was doing and was there if I needed them has been amazing.”
“I have benefitted very much from the support provided, particularly with regards to signposting and providing helpful guidance regarding additional support, events or information ... I think my relationship with the University of Plymouth will carry on, definitely. It’s been a very positive collaboration for me.”
Rebecca has also found the training events run by EPIC useful – both the Introduction to Digital Accessibility event and the LinkedIn Fundamentals training were perfectly timed to enable Rebecca to create her website with accessibility in mind and set up a strong social media presence for The Virtual Hippo.

What’s next for The Virtual Hippo?

The research conducted with EPIC’s support strengthened grant applications to develop the project further, and Rebecca has received Innovate UK funding to continue her research. The next step for The Virtual Hippo is trialling a prototype of the technology with small focus groups.
A mixed methods trial on 32 participants using the technology once a day for two weeks will measure reduction of stress and anxiety using heartrate variability and perceived subjective stress levels. This has the potential to demonstrate the beneficial impact on wellbeing and illustrate the possible value to end users and potential customers.
Rebecca has been approached by a large organisation interested in trialling her app as a stress reduction and relaxation method, which will likely come to fruition after her focus group trial. She has also been invited to speak at a conference at the University of Exeter in June 2023 to present her focus group results, which she is hoping to publish to fill the current gap in academic research related to VR technology in healthcare. After that, she hopes to access the funding she needs to complete the extensive research that will be required to obtain NHS endorsement.

If I can show a reduction in stress, the psychological techniques embedded in the VR experience can be tweaked for chronic pain and the likelihood is that if we can modulate stress, we can look at modulating pain. Even if we can’t, stress is a huge component of chronic pain.

Whatever happens to the company I feel really happy that I’m doing the research to the degree that I’m doing it because it has a place anyway. I think Virtual Hippo has got a future, I really do.
Rebecca Jackson, BA (Hons), PGcert, MSc