Category: fni

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Samsung Develops VR Systems For Mental Health Care

Virtual reality (VR) has seen a rise in use by the healthcare industry. From teaching medical students about trauma procedures, to helping tackle the loneliness and isolation of long-term medical care, VR has seen a variety of uses in medicine. Now Samsung are aiming to develop VR system that can help in the field of mental health.

Mental health care is a complex field, with many of the mechanisms surrounding mental health conditions still poorly understood. Working with VR content creator FNI and the Gangnam Severence Hospital in South Korea, Samsung hopes to gain some insight into this area, and make advances in the field of mental health care.

Gear VR Controller

The project will be aimed at developing systems in the areas of cognitive behaviour therapy, suicide prevention and psychological assessment. A combination of the Samsung Gear VR headset, Gear S3 smartwatch, S Health app and AI virtual assistant Bixby will be used to develop diagnosis kits and other physical products and applications. Medical data from the hospital will be used to ‘teach’ the AI about the medical conditions it will encounter.

The three companies are hoping to be able to turn the products into a commercial product that can be rolled out to hospitals, dementia centres and schools at some point in 2018. There are also plans to make the products available to patients for home use at some point.

VRFocus will bring you further information on Samsung’s VR health applications as it becomes available.

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Samsung is Developing VR Tools to Help Diagnose Mental Health

Samsung Electronics has recently signed a partnership with Korean VR studio FNI and Gangnam Severance Hospital, one of South Korea’s largest hospitals, to develop VR-based mental health diagnosis programs for Samsung Gear VR.

The goal, a report by ZDNet maintains, is to eventually commercialize the VR apps in 2018 for use in hospitals, dementia centers, and schools, before they head to general consumers at some later date.

The apps, developed by FNI, will use medical data obtained from Gangnam Severance Hospital and target Samsung’s Gear VR headset. The ZDNet report maintains that the app will focus on cognitive behavior therapies for suicide prevention, and include psychological assessment tools using the Samsung’s Bixby AI assistant.

the New 2017 Gear VR with Controller

Besides Gear VR and Bixby, the diagnostic tool will also incorporate data retrieved from the Gear S3 smartwatch and the S Health app.

With these partnership, Samsung is looking to capitalize on the Gear VR headset’s ease of mobility, which only requires a flagship Samsung smartphone to run—ranging from the Galaxy S6 line all the up way to the new Note 8.

The company recently collaborated with Sydney, Australia-based VR studio Start VR to develop a Gear VR app to help alleviate stress for diagnosed cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse, a hospital dedicated to fighting cancer in all aspects, both physically and mentally.

SyncThink, a Boston-based startup, created a portable concussion diagnostic tool that uses a tablet and either a Gear VR or Oculus Rift DK2 fitted with an SMI eye tracker. The system, called Eye Sync, is already in use at the athletic divisions of University of Texas and Iowa State University.

It’s not only mobile headsets though that are useful for diagnosing health issues, just take a look at all of the VR health apps making news.

The post Samsung is Developing VR Tools to Help Diagnose Mental Health appeared first on Road to VR.