Using Virtual Reality to help People Experiencing Autism

And what I'm really excited about are these kinds of opportunities that kids and adults are going to have to experience. Things in new ways that they haven't had an opportunity to experience before. I'm hopeful that I'll get to have another conversation with VJ here in the next couple of days, and be able to bring that in. But I wanted to share this episode. Because this was three years ago. Where he was already doing this kind of work and., even though. The apple vision pro is new.

This idea of using virtual reality to help people. Is not new. And so I'm really excited. For you to hear this and experience it. And you may not have heard this on Transformative Principal. So here's my interview from Transformative Principal. No edits, no updates. So this is three years old, but I still think there's something valuable in here. And I especially want you to stick around to the end. And hear what he says about how to be a Transformative Principal.

And understanding what people are experiencing and then how to work backwards to support them. Welcome to transformative principle today. I am excited to have VJ at Ravindran on the podcast. How'd I do pronouncing your last name. I'm all. I'm all worried down. Okay. Good. All right. So VJ created a awesome app that is called Florio. And so VJ, I'll let you tell a little bit about the story of that and how that can be an app to help kids with autism. We'll start. Yeah.

And you really liked it. He started engaging in pretend play for the first time, which is a delayed skill for a lot of kids with autism. And that triggered the idea that what if virtual reality could be a therapy media for. And so what we have today is a application that runs on both iPhone and iPad. It say it's an app, but it's really a system that combines the use of an iPhone and a virtual reality headset with an iPad, uh, that talks over the network.

And, uh, and then enables a supervising adults to. Coach through the iPad therapy sessions or training sessions for a child as they enter into the virtual reality environment. And, uh, and then experience scenes that, um, work on different developments.

And they have different, uh, abilities and skills and developmental levels and all that kind of stuff. But, uh, the idea of doing therapy through VR sounds like a really cool thing. Can you talk a little bit more about how that actually works and what the mechanics of that

Using fun, animated characters, you know, kids with autism go through hundreds of thousands of hours of therapy and they can get pretty monotonous and patronizing at some point. And so, you know, at first objective, let's just make this more fun. Let's figure out a way to recreate what's being done with toys and play paradigms face to face and create an NBR can make it much more fun the second area.

And so we have scenes that, you know, work on things like eye contact or how to imitate another, another person. So we were able to use cartoon characters, fun animals, we can do silly stuff and we can, we can use animations and rewards in life to really spread that. The second area that we saw VR was very powerful and it ends up. It's also a major area of developmental focus today is, uh, is around social and life skills.

So we have lots of therapy to help a child with the basics like eye contact. Today's world. Uh, what we don't have is that as they get older and older, how to help them with those much more subtle social skills or how to help them in safety situations that are hard to replicate in the therapist office. And some there we were able to, in virtual reality, we can create situations that you can't recreate on therapist office.

So we can have a child go through a law enforcement encounter and practice. Talking to that police officer in a way that'll keep them safe. We can have them practice crossing the street and looking both ways, but without the consequences of messing up in the real world. Yeah. And for the social skills, you know, we can put you in the school and the cafeteria and the classroom, but moreover, you know, today for traditional therapy, a child is essentially taught by an adult.

And so I've seen with my own son where he will be able to handle a situation if it's adult to child, but then on the playground, when it's another child is not able to necessarily traverse that. And in VR, we can create the characters to be, to match the children and age. We can vary the race and ethnicity. Make sure that both genders are represented so that we can create actually a much more comprehensive set of, yeah.

And, you know, she's doing some physical therapy right now and she painted this giant picture and the whole purpose of the giant picture was to help her put equal weight on each of her legs. And it was, that was the whole purpose, but she didn't even know that's what she was working on. And she couldn't comprehend that that's what she needed to work on, but the therapist was going above and beyond doing these great things to help. With that.

And, and I love that this app now gives therapists an additional opportunity to, to incorporate those things in as well. And I think that the, the truly lifesaving features can be really important. And you shared an example of not being able to, to associate an interaction with a, an adult with a peer, like out on the playground. And I've seen that so many times with students at school, but also with my own child where, when it's somebody who's.

Standing over them telling them this is how things need to happen. They've been able to be successful, but then when it's appear, then that just goes away. And then with privacy issues and things like that, you can't always get those peers to come into the therapy room and participate in those same activities. So I love, I love what you're doing with that. What are some of the stories that you've seen, where kids have used this and have been able to grow because of using. Yeah.

Um, we had one school system in Pennsylvania. That's been using the system successfully used Florio with a PTSD and schizophrenia child that was having major fears of going outside. And our street crossing lessons ended up helping that child get enough confidence that they could actually.

Um, with the next phase of, uh, of acclimatization to the outside world, they want it to, with the child, we've had, uh, kids who have been mostly non-verbal interact with this and literally get feedback that they've never seen the child. Uh, interact and traditional therapy and an as engaged way as they have here. But going beyond the anecdotal, we have made a big emphasis around research.

We pretty soon after starting the company started looking at research partners and two important ones early on, or a special education school in New Jersey called celebrate the children. And the children's hospital, Philadelphia center for autism research. And so with celebrate the children, a special needs school with north, the New Jersey, we have, we held our first study where we had 12 kids go through five weeks of three times a week intervention.

And these were kids with moderate to severe autism. And we were able to. Work on their eye contact using lessons we've developed. We were able to do benchmarking before and four weeks after the study and were able to show improvement in 10 of the 12 kids. And, uh, we're proud to say that those results were published in JMIR pediatrics and parenting.

Uh, medical journal, uh, last summer and, um, separately with children's hospital, Philadelphia, uh, where the recipient of a what's called an NIH fast-track grant. So we received a $1.7 million grant in 2017 that has helped on really groundbreaking research at the intersection of the autism community and virtual reality. We're in the third year of that research now and in a randomized clinical trial. Um, which is unfortunately a little bit on pause at the moment given COVID 19.

So we'll see when we were able to get back to doing that, but we've been able to show that Florio is safe and highly enjoyable in that study. Um, based on the phase one and. Year of the phase two at chop, we were, uh, in a controlled treatment structure where we were going head to head against, uh, a well-established, uh, video-based therapy. And so we've made it a priority early on to focus on. Gathering the type of research that also shows that Florio is worth the time of these tips.

So John Kat educational

These books used by educators of all roles across north America and worldwide to amplify fresh, engaging voices with practical strategies to create transformative change, learn more in our show notes. Yeah. I just think that is so fantastic. And it's something the reason why I wanted to talk to you on this podcast and share this with principals around the country is that I had never thought of using VR. As a tool for helping kids with autism and.

As an educator been baffled for years about how to reach specific kids, how to help them, how to do things that would accelerate their growth and all while recognizing that, just because they may not be able to communicate with us doesn't mean that they don't have feelings and concerns and passions and desires and all that kind of stuff. Trying to find a way that we can adapt what we're doing to help them.

And, and so when I read about Florio, I thought that it was just such a great way to do that. And so now, as we, as we think about doing this at scale or moving this into other places across the country in schools and then private therapy sessions and at children's hospitals, what are the challenges you see to people adopting Florio for working with kids with autism specifically? Yeah,

And so there is some apprehension around the technology that, you know, in many cases, you know, we carry the burden of being the first virtual reality experience for both the adults and the child. And so we're presenting this it's the first time they've used VR. I'm not to the kids, but the adults, in many cases, the kids have already used VR because of games, but for parents or teachers or therapists that this is new.

And so that then ends up being a challenge, you know, excitingly, we announced last week that, uh, the system, which again, is really two pieces, a smartphone and a virtual reality have said, and an iPad for the developed that. We now support the iPad running over the network in that teletherapy or video conferencing style of deployment. And so, oh, that's very cool.

Given the challenges happening across the world right now with being in the same place at the same time, you know, these kids are suffering where they're not receiving the therapies that they were two weeks ago, three weeks ago. So we think Florida has a big role that it could play in helping by. Behavioral therapy over virtual reality. But yeah, I think virtual reality is still a new technology.

So there's a barrier there, you know, there's, there's an investment around equipment, which we've tried to bring the cost down dramatically through a partnership with sprint the mobile carrier where we're sourcing refurbished equipment. But I would say the biggest barrier above all else is that a child with autism has a very busy schedule, um, with their existing therapies, uh, on top of schooling.

Thinking through not only whether Florio can help, but whether it's worth integrating that into their already busy schedules in some manner is a big decision. Yeah,

So we have subscription plans for the software, both for enterprises like schools and clinics, as well as for families who are looking to do home supplemental care.

And it was, it was really neat to see that, to see them be able to just pick it up and start doing stuff with it. So the last question I asked VJ is what is one thing that a principal can do this week to be a transformative leader? Like.

And I think that's no, that is extra true right now because we've never really imagined being in the situation that we're in to the site. We were trapped inside. We are, so that's a big piece, but, um, you know, for me, what's really motivated me to start the company and work on this for the last four years is, is knowing how much potential these kids have. And what's possible if they can get through. Tools delivered to them and the professionals and family around them.

And so that's been very motivating.