In Virtual Reality News
November 9, 2023 – Haven, a provider of virtual reality (VR) wellness solutions, has today announced that it has created a new way to assist people experiencing mental health challenges. Now, people seeking support, guidance, focus and wellbeing can utilize the company’s new immersive platform to assist them.
Haven is a global community-driven platform for mental wellbeing, leveraging spatial computing and extended reality (XR) to provide immersive experiences that foster wellness and peak performance. The immersive experience is curated to provide people with focussed sessions and courses, away from distractions where they can achieve “transformative health benefits through a variety of experiences,” according to the company.
Sessions include anxiety management, stress relief, self-love and compassion, peak performance and more. Haven launches with a seasoned team from across the XR and wellness arenas, as well as advisors including Microsoft’s Chief Medical Scientist and Peloton’s former Chief Revenue Officer.
With a wide variety of experiences available, supported by a range of guides’ voices in any language using Haven’s unique AI language capabilities, the company stated that it is “connecting up a broken wellness system and responding to a mental health support shortage of crisis proportions.” Haven added that its team is currently in the process of assembling a community of specialist guides with specialist therapeutic, cultural and traditional knowledge from across the world.
Commenting on XR’s role in helping to tackle a potential global mental health crisis, Haven Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer Claire Barnett stated: “Emerging research shows that virtual reality is significantly more effective for reducing anxiety than traditional video formats.
“In an already burdened healthcare system, XR allows us to integrate scalable mental health therapy into daily life for underserved communities including disabled people, older people experiencing loneliness or isolation, incarcerated people and immigrant populations. As we reach a global mental health crisis, immersive therapy could transform patient outcomes.” Barnett is also a former Executive Director of UN Women UK, wellness studio founder and McKinsey & Company management consultant.
“Immersive technology will dramatically change the wellbeing landscape in the next ten years,” said Haven Co-Founder and CEO, Gautam Murgai. “Our goal at Haven is to now make therapeutic experiences more scalable, accessible and integrable into people’s daily lives.”
Murgai comes to Haven from being Metaverse Strategist at PokerStars VR and a serial XR founder at Cerene VR Studio. He brings three years of VR and AR experience, and a background in finance including a stint at Morgan Stanley.
The company’s Chief Technology Officer, Alejandro Simón, added: “We are excited to bring market-leading visuals and an expert community of guides to the wellness space. The depth of mental health knowledge and personalisation that we are building into Haven’s platform will be transformative to the space.”
Simón was previously a Senior Engineering Manager at Unity Technologies and Skyscanner where he led 9 teams and 80 engineers, as well as spending time at PlayStation, EA, SEGA and NaturalMotion.
Joining these three to complete the team of Co-Founders is Usman Ali, Chief Strategy Officer at HodlCo and a former Partner at Mobius Capital Partners. Haven was founded with support from HodlCo, as well as backing from FOV Ventures, Europe’s go-to fund for metaverse founders.
The company stated that it will be launching soon on the Meta Quest platform, for the Quest 2, 3 and Pro headset models, before scaling via other XR platforms and brand partnerships in 2024. For more information on Haven and its immersive wellbeing solution, click here.
Image credit: Haven
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About the author
Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.