This article is part of Upstart, a series about young companies leveraging new science and technology.
Vijay Ravindran has always been fascinated by technology. At Amazon, he oversaw the team that started building and starting Amazon Prime. He then joined The Washington Post as Chief Digital Officer and advised Donald E. Graham in 2013 on the sale of the newspaper to his former boss Jeff Bezos.
By late 2015, Ravin Doran had closed his time at the renamed Graham Holdings Company. However, his main focus was his son, who was six years old at the time and was being treated for autism.
“Then something amazing happened,” Rabindran said.
Ravindran was tinkering with a virtual reality headset when his son asked him to give it a try. After spending 30 minutes using the headset in Google Street View, the kid went to his playroom and began to play what he did in virtual reality.
“It was the first time I saw him pretending to be like that,” Rabindran said. “It’s the moment of the light bulb.”
Like many autistic children, Rabindran’s son struggled with pretending and other social skills. His son’s ability to translate his virtual reality experience into the real world inspired the idea.A year later, Mr. Rabindran started a company called FloreoIs developing virtual reality lessons designed to assist behavior therapists, speech therapists, special educators, and parents working with children with autism.
The idea of using virtual reality to help people with autism has been around for some time, but Ravindran said that with the proliferation of commercial virtual reality headsets since 2015, much more research and commercial deployment. Said it was possible. Floreo was designed to help children develop social skills and train for real-world experiences such as crossing the streets and choosing where to sit in the school cafeteria. We have developed about 200 virtual reality lessons.
Last year, the pandemic surged in demand for telemedicine and distance learning services, and the company offered 17,000 lessons to US customers. Autism experts believe that the company’s flexible platform could become global in the near future.
This is because there is a great demand for behavioral and speech therapies to deal with autism, as well as other forms of intervention. It can take several months to be diagnosed with autism — an important time in a child’s development where therapeutic intervention may be essential. And such treatments are costly and can require a huge investment of time and resources by parents.
The Floreo system requires an iPhone (version 7 or later), a VR headset (low-end models cost only $ 15 to $ 30), and an iPad that parents, teachers, and coaches can use. Person or remote. The cost of the program is approximately $ 50 per month. (Floreo is currently working to enable insurance reimbursement and is Medicaid approved in four states.)
Your child wears a headset to navigate virtual reality lessons, and a coach (parent, teacher, therapist, counselor, or personal aide) monitors and interacts with your child through your iPad.
Lessons cover a variety of situations, such as visiting an aquarium or going to a grocery store. Many of the lessons include teaching children with autism who may have difficulty interpreting nonverbal cues to interpret body language.
Autistic self-advocates say that behavioral therapy to treat autism is not a curable illness and is often imposed on autistic children by non-autistic parents and guardians. Insisting, it is controversial among people with autism. Behavioral therapies can hurt or punish children with behaviors such as fidgeting, they say. Rather than conditioned people with autism to behave like neurotypical individuals, they argue that society should more welcome them and their different ways of experiencing the world.
“Many of the mismatches between people with autism and society are not due to people with autism, but to society,” said Zoe Gross, head of advocacy for the Autism Self-Defense Network. Told. “People should be taught to interact with people with different types of disabilities.”
Ravindran said Floreo respects all the voices of the autistic community with diverse needs. He said Floreo was used by many behavioral health care providers, but was deployed in a variety of situations, including school and home.
“The Floreo system is designed to be positive and fun, helping to create positive enhancements and build skills that help us adapt to the real world,” says Ravindran. ..
In 2017, Floreo received a $ 2 million fasttrack grant from the National Institutes of Health. The company first tests whether children with autism can tolerate headsets, and then conducts randomized controlled trials to help people with autism interact with the police. I am testing.
Early results were promising: according to Investigation Published in the Autism Research Journal (Ravindran was one of the authors), 98% of children completed lessons and calmed concerns about autistic children with sensory sensitivity to resist headsets. I did.
Gross said he saw potential in virtual reality lessons that help people rehearse unfamiliar situations, such as Floreo’s lessons across the street. “Floreo has some really exciting parts like airport walks, tricks or treats, etc. This is a social story of something that doesn’t happen that often in someone’s life,” she said. Treatment lesson.
However, she questioned the general emphasis of the behavior therapy industry on the use of new technologies to teach people with autism social skills.
A second randomized controlled trial using telemedicine conducted by Floreo with another NIH grant, hoping to show that Floreo’s approach is as effective as face-to-face coaching. in progress.
But it was these early successes that convinced Ravin Doran to be fully committed to the project.
“There were a lot of people who were really excited,” he said. “When I started showing my family what I developed, people only gave me a big hug. They started crying when someone was working on such a tech solution for their kids. rice field.”
Clinicians using the Floreo system say that virtual reality environments help children focus on the skills taught in the lessons, unlike the real world, which can be overwhelmed by sensory stimuli. ..
Celebrate the Children, a non-profit private school in Denville, NJ, hosted one of Floreo’s early pilots for children with autism and related challenges. Monica Osgood, co-founder and managing director of the school, said the school continued to use the system.
She said wearing a virtual headset could be very helpful to students, as they could control the environment with a slight movement of their head. “Virtual reality is certainly a real gift for the students we continue to use,” she said.
Kelly Rainey, Special Guidance Manager for the Cuyahoga County Developmental Disability Commission in Ohio, said her organization has used Floreo to support students’ lives and social skills for the past year. .. Her colleague Holly Winterstein, an early childhood intervention expert, said the tool was more effective than the conversation cards normally used by therapists. The office initially had two headsets, but immediately purchased the equipment for each of the eight staff.
“I see endless possibilities,” said Winterstein.
“Floreo’s social skills are sticking,” said Mikea Rahman, a speech therapist who focuses on the poorly serviced people (and Floreo’s customers) in Houston. The system is “probably one of the best or best social skills tools I’ve ever used.” (She added that 85 percent of patients are Medicaid-based.)
To date, the company has raised approximately $ 6 million. Investors include Life Force Capital, a venture capital firm focused on healthcare software, and the Autism Impact Fund, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in companies dealing with neurological conditions. (Ravindran refused to identify whether the company was profitable.)
For Ravindran, the company is a mission. “When I started exploring virtual reality as a cure, I didn’t know if it was a hobby project or a business that would cost a little money, hire some people and then leave. Do other things. For, “he said. “At some point, I got to this place. If I felt it, I wouldn’t make it, and no one would.”
