Ap­plied­VR is bet­ting a new study could strength­en the case for in­sur­ance cov­er­age of its VR chron­ic pain treat­ment

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Matthew Stoudt knows he has his work cut out for him when it comes to pitch­ing his com­pa­ny’s ap­proach to treat­ing chron­ic low back pain with vir­tu­al re­al­i­ty.

Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics, which re­ly on soft­ware to use new ap­proach­es to treat dif­fer­ent con­di­tions, have stum­bled in the last year. Pear Ther­a­peu­tics, which made a treat­ment for sub­stance use dis­or­der, went bank­rupt in April, and Ak­ili In­ter­ac­tive in Sep­tem­ber piv­ot­ed away from its pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics mod­el for AD­HD treat­ment to fo­cus on non-pre­scrip­tion sub­scribers. Us­ing apps in­stead of pills to treat med­ical con­di­tions hasn’t re­ceived the in­sur­ance cov­er­age need­ed to make dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics a sus­tain­able busi­ness.

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