‘Virtual reality as medicine’: Startup helps police de-stress
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowOne hundred Indianapolis police officers are donning virtual reality headsets as a method to battle the dangerous levels of stress that come with their job. A Black female entrepreneur is leading the charge with her startup, Peak Mind, which recently landed a $48,000 Indiana Innovation grant.
The Software-as-a-Service platform uses VR headsets that also track biometrics, so Peak Mind can track how the technology is reducing tension. While Peak Mind’s initial focus is on law enforcement, its founder says the technology could “disrupt” stress in any high-pressure workplace, and she wants to use science to prove it.
Indianapolis-based Peak Mind makes the software, which pairs with off-the-shelf HP Omnicept Reverb G2 virtual reality headsets. While VR headsets aren’t a common sight in most offices yet, the FDA has approved a long list of VR and augmented reality therapies, noting they have “the potential to transform health care…changing how and where care is delivered.”
Supported by the recent grant, 100 Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers are visiting Peak Mind’s lab to use the headsets for 15 minutes before and after each shift to reduce stress.
“Depending on how hard [the officer’s] day was—how much stress or crime they experienced that day—we ask them what they want to do in [the VR setting]. We give them options like meditative stations, mindfulness moments, coaching, dad jokes—because we know laughter is medicine,” says Peak Mind founder and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Alicia Mckoy. “If we can make them laugh and disrupt that stress they carried all day, we’re hoping when they get back in their squad car and go home, they’re not taking that chronic acute stress back to their families.”
While the officers are immersed in various settings, the high-tech headsets also capture biometric data, including stress markers like blood pressure, heart rate and cognitive load.
“If we’re going to focus on disrupting stress, we need to be able to measure it,” says Mckoy. “We’re really focused on the scientific achievement of what level of stress do you come into a simulation or coaching moment with, and what level do you leave with? If we can watch that over time, our data improves, and we can also hopefully convince the user that this works.”
In addition to stress reduction, the headsets deliver various social-emotional learning tools. Mckoy, a Rising Entrepreneur nominee for TechPoint’s Mira awards, says VR is seven times more effective at teaching social-emotional skills than reading information or listening to someone.
“Sixty percent of employees quit a job because of poor communication with a manager or poor inter-personal relationships, so instead of losing talent, why don’t we empower them to have a critical conversation?” says Mckoy. “Imagine you’re having a tough day, and you need to have a critical conversation with your manager. [With VR], I can put you in a kayak with an avatar of your boss in the kayak next to you, and you can row in a beautiful nature scene and learn how to have that conversation.”
In addition to the law enforcement industry, Mckoy says the company is focusing on other high-stress careers. Peak Mind is working to secure other grants to help more Hoosier police officers and is getting interest from nurses, EMTs and crime scene techs.
“We’re leaning into industries where drugs, alcoholism and abuse in the household are indicators of how burnout is turning into ‘act out.’ We’re helping families and communities be safer,” says Mckoy.
Underscoring on-the-job stress as a public health crisis, the U.S. Surgeon General has named “Workplace Well-being” as one of the nation’s top five health priorities. Mckoy says the VR headsets help produce “happy hormones” such as dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin, “that we don’t necessarily get during the work day.” Mckoy says it’s rewarding to physically see the tension leaving officers’ bodies.
“Seeing the transformation in people every day in our lab is exciting; their shoulders drop, color comes back to their skin—you can see their hope come back, so they can go back to their families with less stress and trauma and not carry that burden to them. That fuels me every day,” says Mckoy. “It’s beautiful to see both: the physical transformation, but also that we’re proving it biometrically and scientifically. The really cool thing is when the officers feel it themselves.”
Mckoy says VR headsets are gaining traction in healthcare and could be covered by insurance in the future.
Mckoy says being a black female entrepreneur helps motivate her to grow the number of women in tech careers.