News - 21/04/22 inMersiv Technologies Receives Epic MegaGrant

We are absolutely honored to announce that inMersiv Technologies is an Epic MegaGrants recipient! The support from Epic Games will empower us to continue our developments in the medical field with Unreal Engine and to expand our 3D team!

WHAT we do?

inMersiv targets healthcare institutions and more specifically nursing homes that wish to improve the quality of life of their patients.

We offer Sam, a 360° multi-sensory immersion technology within a 3.60m x 3.60m (11.8ft x 11.8ft) square room. Sam brings well-being through the use of personalized experiences and stands as an alternative to other non-drug solutions available on the market.

These experiences are created using our Sam Therapy software that orchestrates the generation of customized instances calculated in real time by the Unreal Engine, the world’s most advanced real-time 3D tool. We have developed an innovative product that is scientifically approved. We have conducted a feasibility study that demonstrates that Sam increases patient wellbeing without any side effects.

Relax on a heavenly Caribbean beach.

Our interface allows the digitization of patient data by generating medical profiles. These profiles can be used to provide daily support tailored to the individual. Sam is a very complex technology, but its use has been greatly simplified. In other words, Sam is a tool that does not require any prior training of medical staff to avoid overloading their schedule.

HOW DO WE USE UNREAL ENGINE?

We use the full power of Unreal Engine in the creation and real-time rendering of our custom environments. The environments are carefully designed to offer patients a photo-realistic immersion while allowing them to interact with different elements.

Unreal Engine, in addition to providing us with the ability to design realistic environments, enables us complete modularity. Each patient will have his or her own instance, customized according to the data collected by our Sam Therapy software. Imagine a nursing home resident who used to be a scuba diver, will now, thanks to Sam, be able to explore the ocean floor again.

The possibilities of the Unreal Engine are infinite and we would like to leverage them to the fullest in the field of health care, so we coupled the engine with our atmospheric simulation system to simulate the wind of the environments displayed. The institutionalized patient who had a passion for hiking, will again be able to walk through a green valley and feel the power of the wind rushing through the tall grass. Once again, thanks to the plurality of Unreal Engine, this same patient will be able to stop by a rustic house, by the fire, with his pet while sheltering from the wind.

HOW DO WE BRING THIS SOFTWARE INTO THE MEDICAL FIELD?

We started from the observation that most institutionalized people suffer from depression or anxiety often due to their sudden change of environment. Various solutions exist but they are not specifically effective:

  • Medication solutions: Effective in the short term, however antipsychotics can alter the quality of life of the elderly. Medication can also augment the risk of a vascular accident in the short term, leading to other serious side effects.
  • Non-medication solutions: often too complex to deploy in the field. These solutions generally lack effective standardization and gather dust due to lack of practical use by the medical team.

In close collaboration with healthcare experts, we designed Sam, a creator of emotionally positive multi-sensory experiences, generated specifically for each individual. The beneficial effects of Sam have been scientifically proven.

Unreal Engine is metaphorically “the open window of our system”. A window that opens up new perspectives in an institutional world that is all too often pristine white. Through this window, patients will be able to travel, dream and experience again.

The environments are generated and adapted for each patient according to their profiles.

WHAT ARE THE RESULTS?

A study was carried out on the use of Sam in 2021, by the psycho-physiology research unit of the teaching hospital Erasme-ULB.

The results demonstrate significant improvement in well-being with patients, for those who were suffering from neuro-cognitive disorders as well as those who were not, both during and after their time in the Sam session.

For the 19 patients who participated in the 5 sessions, the results from the feasibility study are quite encouraging. They show that patients living in a nursing home, with or without neurocognitive disorders (dementia), have no difficulty tolerating their presence in Sam.

More specifically, the results collected thanks to VAS scales and observations within the device even underline that the immersive system allows them to feel greater well-being during the sessions than before the sessions. This effect persists after ~3 sessions.