Tech company Rendever, whose platform focuses on the needs of isolated seniors, is collaborating with the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) on a multi-site clinical trial on the effects of virtual reality on older adults and their families. The National Institutes on Aging (NIA) is financing the research with a $2 million Phase II grant.
The study will focus on seniors living with moderate cognitive impairment who dwell in senior living facilities. The hospice population has been hit hard by social isolation during the outbreak, as have seniors in general. Research has linked social isolation with increased risk of early mortality among seniors and seriously ill patients, as well as a number of exacerbated physical and mental health concerns. .
“The statistic that most people find really alarming is that social isolation is as detrimental to one’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Prior to the pandemic, nobody really had a strong understanding of what social isolation could really do to an individual,” Kyle Rand, co-founder and CEO of Rendever, told Hospice News. “Particularly for individuals who are in hospice care, their access to the world is still incredibly limited.”
Hospice and palliative care providers are increasingly using virtual reality to help reduce pain, anxiety and feelings of fear and isolation in patients with chronic conditions. Virtual reality could be effective in helping to alleviate those symptoms, according to a 2019 report from the Journal of Pain Research.
Through these systems patients can re-experience fond memories, visit new places or experience activities such as sky-diving, visiting national parks, zoos or the ocean, among others. Rendever has developed hundreds of these scenarios, according to Rand.
For the forthcoming clinical trial, Rendever and UCSB are using different types of virtual experiences, including travel adventures, revisiting important places from their past, or reviewing family photos or videos. Study participants will be able to choose from a list of about 25 curated programs, Tamara Afifi told Hospice News. Afifi is chair of the Department of Communication at the University of California Santa Barbara and one of the principal investigators on the project.
While virtual reality is often an individual experience, family engagement is critical to this research. Patients can share these experiences with family members, including those who live a long distance away.
Involving family in a patient’s end-of-life care is integral to hospice services, and providers have sought solutions to address isolation during the last year. Many have relied on telehealth to connect with patients in nursing homes and other restricted facilities, as well as keep patients in touch with their families.
Preliminary work has found that engaging through virtual reality has benefits for family members and caregivers as well as the patient.
“I think that’s a novel thing that we’re tapped into with this study. We are also interested in caregiver guilt and caregiver burden, and so the beauty of this project is really the family dyad,” Afifi said. “It’s very emotionally taxing for a family to see their loved one in hospice, and to be able to provide a sense of joy and relief for the older adult and the family member is huge.”
The study is expected to extend through the end of 2022, involving nearly 400 participants in 12 senior living communities in the Boston metropolitan area and central California. The research team is prepared to work remotely if necessary due to COVID-19.
The researchers are using a number of screening criteria to ensure that the programs are safe for the participants. For example, virtual reality may not be appropriate for a patient with severe dementia who may be experiencing hallucinations, paranoia or vertigo as a result of their condition.
Rendever and UCSB are carrying out this research in senior living facilities, because that environment would allow them to evaluate the impact of these systems more quickly. It also allows them to more easily identify potential candidates for the study, Rand indicated. However, Afifi added that in the future they would like to perform similar studies among seniors in the home setting. The collaborators are seeking grants to fund that home-based research.
One reason the study is focused on seniors experiencing cognitive impairment is the profound detrimental effects of isolation on those patients, particularly during the pandemic. “Even just talking with the [senior living] communities that are working with this going forward, a lot of them have told us that it’s unbelievable what the pandemic has done to levels of dementia,” Afifi said. “Being socially isolated during this time period has been really devastating for a lot of older adults, so it’s kind of sped up the aging process.”
Companies featured in this article:
