Today, UK-based XR training solutions provider Immerse announced the hiring of Paul Jones as its new VP and Technology Strategist for Life Sciences; this follows Jones’ stint as the Head of Emerging Technologies and Global Innovation Labs at AstraZeneca.
To mark the hiring, Jones will spearhead the firm’s strategic focus on commercial partnerships, namely healthcare and life sciences sectors – with Jones’ previous experience at the global research-based biopharmaceutical company assisting with this focus.
Tom Symonds, Founder and CEO of Immerse, explained that the hiring reinforces and elevates the firm’s “position as the leading XR training technology and solutions provider for enterprise.”
Moreover, Symonds added:
Having worked with Paul in his previous role, I know he is one of the leading figures in the accelerating XR enterprise domain. His direct experience in the strategic development of scalable XR platform ecosystems and leading the effective optimisation of access to training content and solutions will be invaluable to Immerse. He is a true innovator in enterprise human skills and experiential learning. We look forward to leveraging Paul’s deep sector experience and commercial expertise to identify and source further enterprise commercial opportunities across the sectors.
Jones’ history also saw him lead projects for defining, designing, and architecting an agnostic ecosystem of scalable platforms for enterprise end-users and supporting clients through every step of their adoption journey.
Jones is also bringing extra experience to Immerse via his positions as an advisor to the XR Safety Initiative and as a member of the IEEE Spatial Web Working Group. These roles give Jones a unique perspective on the industry and, therefore, allowing him to keep his finger on the pulse of XR from a commercial to a regulatory perspective – crucial knowledge for an enterprise–grade immersive solution provider.
Paul Jones also added:
I’m very excited to be joining Immerse, which is a highly ambitious scale up leading the charge in redefining how companies approach training through the creation and delivery of innovative enterprise XR training solutions that help maximise human performance, create a safer and more productive workforce, and increase operational efficiencies. Since its founding in 2014, Tom and Justin (the co-founders) have built Immerse into the go-to platform for forward-thinking organisations, and I look forward to working with them closely as we seek to take advantage of the commercial partnership opportunities across the healthcare and life sciences sectors.
More on Immerse
Notably, Immerse runs a Marketplace platform that leverages a user-friendly interface to make it easy for businesses to find, purchase, and deploy AR/VR/MR training services suitable for a specific use case – with the platform supporting roughly 120 immersive training solutions from 25 partners like VirtualSpeech, Bodyswaps, FreeRangeXR, and Hard Hat VR.
The Immerse Marketplace platform allows users to browse and purchase VR apps for training a workforce; end-users can deploy a single app across thousands of users, with support to scale it across a workplace. Additionally, the platform offers anonymized distribution, so users can share apps without requiring credentials, making it easier for businesses of all sizes to deploy immersive training apps to their employees.
One of the critical features of the Immerse Marketplace is its reporting and data insights functionality via bespoke analytics monitoring based on predefined parameters using xAPI protocol-based structures to standardize data and VR experience monitoring.
The analytics service allows trainers to track users’ progress and identify areas where users need more training, with the post-assessment information also helping trainers track the effectiveness of training programs and improve training content.
In April 2023, NVIDIA entered a project partnership with Immerse to launch VR-to-Desktop streaming for international language learners. This partnership allows users to access the Immerse service as a WebXR application via standard browser services, therefore eliminating the need for intensive computing requirements for accessing immersive learners, making it easier for them to learn via a browser.
Moreover, in May 2023, VirtualSpeech, an immersive training platform that leverages ChatGPT/conversational AI technology, became a marketplace partner with Immerse. With the firm constantly gaining new solutions on its marketplace platform, it could be a key for encouraging end-users to step towards scaling XR training in the workplace.
