Social isolation has proliferated amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but US virtual reality (VR) firm Rendever is helping senior citizen communities to overcome the crisis with immersive social experiences.
The company recently released ‘RendeverFit’, a new solution designed for the elderly that merges physical fitness with cognitive exercises and socialisation.
Today we’re unveiling RendeverFit™ – the world’s first VR platform that merges #physical exercise with #cognitive fitness and #socialization, designed specifically for older adults.
Learn more and schedule a demo at https://t.co/aXhnH9fMOd! pic.twitter.com/XNeC7AIkoF— Rendever (@RendeverHealth) September 8, 2021
On top of this, seniors can access online classes with live instructions from remote fitness experts providing guidance from anywhere in the world.
Additionally, ‘Multi-Brush’ by Rendever is a multiplayer version of Tilt-Brush which provides senior living communities with a way to express themselves in VR while simultaneously improving fitness.
XR Today spoke with Kyle Rand, Co-Founder and CEO of Rendever, to discuss how the firm’s VR solution is helping physical and mental wellbeing in senior living communities.
RendeverFit for Seniors
XR Today: Can you start by introducing us to the RendeverFit solution?
Kyle Rand: Rendeverfit is our newest platform and it’s one that we’ve been working on for quite a while now.
Over the past five years, we’ve visited hundreds of senior living communities [and] one thing that has always struck me is that I have never walked into a [senior living] community and seen their physical recreation area utilised.
With RendeverFit, we realised there is an opportunity to take our approach to engaging social VR programming, and [use this to] actually help communities utilise these [recreation] spaces a lot better.
So we’re combining physical and cognitive with the social and are launching with three modules.
Firstly, one of them is a cycle application in which people are actually riding bikes in VR against each other while doing cognitive tasks, and another one is a paddle application. The third is a paint application, Multi-Brush, that we launched in the beginning of 2021 as part of this fitness platform.
RendeverFit for Social Wellbeing
XR Today: What opportunities does RendeverFit present for improving social wellbeing?
Kyle Rand: Social isolation is tied to things like an increase in [an individual’s] depression, anxiety, and risk of suicide, but [can also cause] things like a 30 percent increase in risk for heart attack, a 30 percent increase in risk for stroke, and a 50 percent increase in dementia.
So for us, social structure is number one and behind every single application that we’ve designed.
As we look to the future, we see an opportunity to incorporate live instructors, bringing people from outside of the community to host live RendeverFit classes to senior living communities.
Not only should RendeverFit Live classes get residents from the same community into the same room, but our infrastructure means that we’re able to connect hundreds of communities around the world.
We could have people dial in from Australia, Canada, or the United States, and everybody can come together to enjoy a shared experience outside of the four walls of their building.
Multi-Brush for Mental Health Among Seniors
XR Today: How does Multi-Brush fit into Rendever’s mission to improve wellbeing among seniors?
Kyle Rand: I always wanted to bring fun into the Rendever platform and into all of our [senior living] communities.
The more you paint in a fully immersive, 360 canvas, you are moving your limbs. You’re moving the lower and upper body [and] many other parts, which is especially significant for the older population.
So, it felt like a really natural fit and with the data we’re getting, we’re able to quantify total body movements and tool vertices. There is a lot that we’re going to be able to do with that.
XR Today: What benefits come from the Multi-Brush brand of immersive art therapy?
Kyle Rand: We have had art therapists reach out to say “this is exactly what we need to be able to do” especially during lockdowns, when it’s hard to do anything in-person.
By doing remote VR art therapy, you’re still socially congregating, experiencing, expressing yourself, and getting all the benefits of [in-person] art therapy. There was a tonne of excitement.
One of the best pieces of feedback was from one of our partners, and we put two of them from the corporate team into Multi-Brush. They honestly stayed in it for 45 minutes, non-stop painting! At one point, I heard one of them say, “I can totally see how this is exercise without actually being exercise!”
For more information, please visit: https://www.rendever.com/
