Mark Zuckerberg has the Metaverse. Spiderman has the Spiderverse. And now seniors have the “Great American Elderverse,” an immersive space for seniors who want to use virtual reality to socialize. 

The Elderverse concept, co-developed by Mynd Immersive as an expansion of their existing VR programming, was unveiled at the CES conference in Las Vegas last week. 

Mynd’s existing VR tools, which include a headset and tablet, were already meant as a way to get seniors to interact with peers — or in the case of long-term care communities, with their caregivers — Mynd executives had previously said.

The new Elderverse differs in several ways, Mynd CEO Chris Brickler told McKnight’s Tuesday. 

The new platform does away with the tablet and starts users out on a lush virtual coastline, from which they can jump to any number of entertainment or therapy options, including a meditation island, “world tours,” or even virtual church sessions. 

“From a tech point of view, it’s a big evolution for the company,” Brickler said. “For a senior who is cognitively healthy and can handle the adventurous aspect of navigating the world, it’s a foray into what younger adult audiences do [with open world video games].”

Not only is the idea for seniors to use the Elderverse world to interact with one another, but their family members also can use the tech or follow along with their smartphone, viewing a 2D replication of what an Elderverse user is looking at, and talking with them in real time, Brickler explained.

The concept of communal virtual spaces is gaining traction within senior living. While tech companies like Mynd are trying to create virtual worlds, the more grassroots Thrive Pavilion, which runs off Meta Quest headsets, has been steadily growing and offers a suite of VR programs for seniors to socialize, McKnight’s reported over the summer.

The overall picture of VR, mixed and augmented reality, for seniors and everyone else, has been termed “extended reality” by tech users and developers alike.

In addition to Mynd Immersive, other partners in the Elderverse project include: VR goggles maker HTC VIVE, the CTA Foundation and AT&T. 

The Elderverse won’t be available until the second quarter of this year, Brickler said, adding that they are still “rounding up” donors for the company’s project goal to introduce VR therapeutics to 500 underserved senior care communities over the next few years.

The company continues to work on its VR therapy program for seniors in memory care, Brickler said, noting that, among its current pool of content is a VR “medication management” tool that lets seniors practice organizing their pills without real-world consequences.

Other innovations could include custom avatars for individual seniors, as well as a continual revamping of VIVE’s headset gear as technology switches from bulkier helmets to goggles and glasses. 

Although virtual reality systems often are seen as solitary entertainment in a fabricated world, the use of VR systems in senior living appears to motivate people to interact and socialize more vibrantly with elements of the real world, a new study shows.

Older adults who used a VR program that involved walking around a cityscape ended up being more active, both physically and socially, even if the VR itself didn’t involve social interaction, the study found.

Most senior living and care providers play up the socializing benefits of living in their communities for residents, but nevertheless residents may struggle with the major life change constituted by moving from different communities or having already faced isolation due to the deaths of friends and family. 

In addition, many older adults who have needs for specialized care, such as for dementia, sadly are isolated by their conditions. 

“This result is really interesting because positive impacts exist even if the time spent to use the [immersive rirtual reality] decreased,” the study authors noted. “If the IVR led to reduced loneliness, it is probably because physical activity created opportunities to meet people in the real/physical world, that is being an indirect effect of the IVR.”

The VR citywalk was one of two dual studies conducted by the researchers. The first study was comparative and tried to find a baseline evaluation and acceptance of VR among older adults. It found that seniors significantly prefer VR compared with wearables such as smartwatches. 

Interestingly, one of the main reasons the study participants said they were more accepting of VR tech was that they believed that it was less intrusive to their privacy than wearables — despite the fact that many VR tools can and do collect a variety of data, and some clinical-VR programs are now being used exclusively for the purpose of collected better diagnostics. 

The conclusion that VR is, often indirectly, improving social ties for senior living residents dovetails with another recent study that indicates that using some VR can help enhance the relationship between older adults and their immediate caregivers, the McKnight’s Tech Daily recently reported.

Virtual reality, as deployed in senior living and care, so far has been an incredible success story, with the technology earning many accolades and generating few concerns. 

But just because studies have gone easy on VR’s potential drawbacks doesn’t mean that concerns don’t exist, experts warn. 

A recent overview of VR tech in the sector mostly failed to find any concrete concerns about how the tech is affecting residents. The story, published recently in the Washington Post, even noted that VR is slightly preferable to older adults sitting on a couch watching TV all day, in terms of health risks from being too sedentary. 

The story, however, highlighted some broad areas of concern. They included issues endemic to all new tech that is emerging, such as the need to ensure privacy protections. 

Although VR, along with artificial intelligence and robotics tools, thus far is being used in long-term care settings as a valuable complement to existing caregivers, it is easy to imagine how the technology could be used simply to remove human care elements in the future, the story noted.

Experts quoted in the story provided the contrast of an older adult “hiking” with his or her loved one in a virtual nature setting versus the future possibility that the person would have to make due with a fake avatar, known in video game parlance as a “non-player character.”

Despite the light notes of caution presented in the story, overall studies and reports conducted in the past year have painted a very robust and promising picture of VR use for older adults. That goes beyond entertainment and includes possible clinical and therapeutic uses.

Maybe most significantly, VR tools appear to improve older adults’ socializing and reduce feelings of isolation rather than contribute to it. 

In addition to interacting with peers through the VR, older adults can use the entertainment as a conversation piece or it can greatly improve the relationship between residents and their caregivers, many of whom act as guides for the VR programming, experts have told the McKnight’s Tech Daily.

Virtual reality is having a moment. Last month, a study showed that VR tools can help establish stronger ties between older adults and their caregivers at senior living and care communities.

Now, new study results show that seniors in skilled nursing facilities believe using VR tech overwhelmingly helped address feelings of loneliness and social isolation. 

Both studies used VR headsets and programming from tech company MyndImmersive, which is one of several companies trying to lead the way in expanding the use of VR tech within long-term care settings.

The new study on VR’s social benefits is a collaboration between MyndImmersive, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Indiana-based senior living and care provider American Senior Communities. 

Mynd provides a variety of content aimed at older adults through its VR tech, including “tours” around the world and theatrical performances. 

The results showed that 88% of skilled nursing participants felt using the VR tools reduced feelings of isolation and improved socialization with their peers. 

“ASC is very intentional in choosing partnerships that allow us to leverage innovation and technology to enrich the lives of the residents we are honored to serve,” said Janean Kinzie, vice president of social wellness and enrichment at ASC. “Mynd Immersive has demonstrated significant benefits for our staff and residents, and we are grateful to have participated in Mynd’s endeavors to validate these advantages.”

The study, which began in August, took place in 15 of ASC’s communities. The previous study on VR and the caregiver/resident relationship also took advantage of Mynd’s newer headsets, which are less bulky and look more like large goggles, Mynd executives explained.

Among the numerous other VR companies in the senior living and care space are Rendever, which recently conducted a similar study on older adult health and connection, and XRHealth, which has VR programs that are designed with a more clinical purpose, to target chronic conditions. 

In the not-too-distant future, older adults who need physical therapy could strap on a pair of virtual reality glasses and visit a “clinic” from wherever they live. 

The vision for some VR healthcare startups is to make it commonplace for an entire suite of care to exist virtually.

“We believe most out-patient rooms will exist in the Metaverse,” said Eran Orr, CEO of XRHealth, during a recent webinar hosted by VIVE on how VR is reshaping healthcare. “That is what we are trying to build.”

One benefit of using virtual therapy rooms, compared with in-person visits, is that it becomes easier to track vitals and mobility metrics in real time, Orr said. 

The XRHealth speakers listed chronic pain and neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease as the most common reasons for using their tech. 

Approximately 30% of older adults deal with chronic pain, and often this subset of individuals has trouble accessing proper care to manage the condition, according to a recent survey conducted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. 

Although, often, older adults or others attempting physical therapy view clinicians as “professional torturers,” using a VR setting can allow for a person to focus on something other than his or her pain or soreness from movement, said Lindsey van den Dungen, clinical liaison for XRHealth.

“We get a lot of feedback from patients that it’s fun,” van den Dungen said of the virtual appointments. “Chronic pain patients are often quite fearful of in-person visits. We can take away some of their stress and anxiety and start to introduce gentle movements before challenging them a bit more.” 

In addition to expanding options for VR healthcare, senior living communities continue to add VR tools, such as virtual tours, to their offerings. 

One retirement community that recently added virtual tours is Shell Point near Fort Myers, FL. Prospective residents now can tour its new luxury independent living campus, Vista Cay, the company announced this week. 

Two facilities run by Salmon Health and Retirement in Massachusetts also added 360-degree virtual tours on their websites earlier in the fall.

Much has been said and written about how older adults in general embrace virtual reality devices, but now distinct differences are emerging among the age sub-groupings.

“Research on VR treats older adults as a monolith,” authors behind a recent study noted. “But there are substantial differences across age 65 to 100+ year olds that may affect their experiences.”

One emerging factor is that “younger seniors” — those aged 65 to 75 years — are less likely to have hearing or visual impairments that would impact their use of VR platforms, the researchers found.

Younger seniors, therefore, were more likely to use and appreciate the benefits of VR (for this and other reasons). 

This critical difference could affect whether it is feasible for senior living operators to pursue VR tech for residents or if their demographic skews too old for VR investments to be worthwhile.

The study surveyed 245 adults whose average age was 83; that is significantly higher — more than a decade — than the typical age of participants in VR studies, the researchers said. The average age of a senior living resident, however, is 84 years.

As with similar studies, the researchers also found that VR bolstered the relationship between older adults and their caregivers. 

Increasingly, VR tools are being used across a wide spectrum of activities for senior living, from pure entertainment to clinical therapy to nurse training.

The VR study authors acknowledge some limitations on their survey results, which did not confirm whether or not, as people approach the age of 100, they simply had too many physical limitations to get use out of the technology.

The researchers concluded, however, that more studies should reflect demographic differences between seniors, rather than assuming that anyone over 65 ought to be lumped together in analyses.

“These findings reaffirm calls from other scholars for more research on heterogeneity in the use of and attitudes toward digital technologies within the growing and diverse older adult population,” the study authors concluded.

Researchers have demonstrated the ability to use artificial intelligence as a tool for detecting diabetes early in older adults.

The new artificial intelligence model finds that X-ray images collected during routine medical care can provide warning signs for diabetes, even in people who don’t meet the guidelines for elevated risk, as reported recently by Emory University.

In some cases, the chest X-ray warned of high diabetes risk as early as three years before the patient eventually received a diagnosis. The model’s output also provides a numerical risk score that potentially could help clinicians customize the treatment approach for patients.

The multi-institutional team reported that the model could help physicians detect the disease earlier and prevent complications. The findings were published in Nature Communications.

» Robots, virtual reality increasingly enhance senior living experiences

Robots are in force at many senior living communities across the country, providing everything from meals to locating help.

Some American Senior Communities properties in Indiana have added a robot named “Robbie” to help provide limited services.

Robbie delivers and serves food, allowing members of the dining staff to give more attention to residents. The robot features trays, safety sensors and music, and it has been assigned the task of transporting food between the kitchen and dining rooms alongside culinary staff members.

“Our goal in using robots is to allow our dining staff to spend more time in the dining room with residents, ensuring that their needs are met,” said Karen Powell, vice president of nutrition and culinary services at American Senior Communities.

At The Falls at Cordingly Dam, a Benchmark Senior Living assisterd living and memory care community in Newton, MA, it is virtual reality experiences from Rendever that are enhancing daily life. The platform includes videos and 360-degree images that let viewers explore places from their past or sites they have never seen. 

This embrace of some types of technology, however, comes with express hesitancy about other forms of technology, including the use of artificial intelligence in primary care and various types of therapy.

Video games are becoming a dominant entertainment feature in eldercare, one senior living operator touts, highlighting one community’s affinity for Wii Bowling and much more.

A recent review of the broad benefits video games can provide for older adults adds to the growing body of research that suggests game developers are targeting older cohorts, and even innovating directly for senior living residents.

The popularity of video games among communities managed by the Goodman Group prompted the company’s recent post, which makes the bold statement that video games and virtual reality are benefiting residents’ physical, cognitive and emotional well-being. 

Those claims, however, are backed by various studies over the past few years, including one report involving more than 100 older adult participants that concluded that “playing may serve as a positive activity associated with successful aging.” 

The virtual bowlers who live in communities run by the Goodman Group include those at The Village Senior Residence, an independent living, assisted living and memory care community in Missoula, MT, and The Inn on Westport, an independent living, assisted living and memory care community in Sioux Falls, SD.

Although one recent survey found that “only” 6% of video game players were age 65 and older, previous studies have shown that this cohort plays for longer periods of time, and more frequently, than even younger gamers, because they have more leisure time.

The physical benefits to gaming come from the development of more games, such as Wii sports, that involve some kind of movement. Although those games aren’t going to turn anyone into professional athletes, for older adults, using certain VR and game options helps with walking and coordination, the Goodman Group said.

Games that are more puzzle-oriented also increasingly are being used in memory care communities. Even the simple act of manipulating a joystick has applications that researchers are hoping to use to evaluate people living with Parkinson’s disease, the McKnight’s Tech Daily reported earlier this fall.

Over the past few years, it’s been established that older adults living with dementia can benefit from the use of virtual reality programs, either for therapy or entertainment purposes.

Now, a new study shows that VR tech also strengthens the relationship between older adults and their professional caregivers. 

“They [older adults] might remember they did a trip along Route 66 years and years ago,” Chris Brickler, CEO of Mynd Immersive, formerly MyndVR, explained Wednesday. “Now picture a VR series where a caregiver can ‘drive’ the senior along that road. They can unlock a flood of old memories. It makes for happy seniors and a happy caregiver.”

The ability for professional caregivers to not only embrace new technology, but to feel as if they are making a difference in the lives of residents, could be valuable for senior living communities, where an ongoing concern exists about having enough staff members to meet residents’ needs. 

An overwhelming majority, 95%, of senior living caregivers said they believed that using the VR was “moderately to extremely beneficial” for building a relationship with residents, according to the study results, which included 245 older adults and 39 caregivers across 16 different senior living communities.

Although caregivers don’t always put on the glasses or a headset, those who use Mynd Immersive’s technology are given a tablet with which they can control a VR experience for residents or “just go along for the ride,” Brickler explained, noting that the caregiver can “see everything the senior sees.”

The first phase of the study used VR glasses from HTC Vive and took place at Stanford University’s Human Interaction Lab.

The plan is to conduct a multiyear research effort, Bickler said. The study also found that 81% of professional caregivers preferred using VR with their residents compared with any other activities.

The research is a collaboration between Stanford, Mynd Immersive and AT&T 5G Healthcare. 

Many companies now are taking advantage of VR’s expansion, not only as a tool for entertainment, but for therapy and even caregiver training, as McKnight’s has reported over the past few months.

The physical technology itself is shifting, Brickler explained, moving from headsets to more comfortable glasses, which in turn allows for VR companies to experiment with blending in “augmented reality” tools.

“Imagine a small yoga room or gym [at a senior living community],” Brickler said. “It’s uninspiring in most cases. People aren’t motivated to come into that little room. What we’ve done is knocked the four walls off that room. It can be a kitchen or a dining room or grocery store or ATM machine. We’ll bring all these things in and get seniors back on their feet.”

A new research center will examine how digital technologies, including artificial intelligence and virtual reality, can help provide treatment to older adults living with Alzheimer’s disease and other clinical conditions.

The researchers recently received $3 million in funding for a “living lab” that will function as a residence, including living room, kitchen and bathroom, for senior participants. It will deploy various smart technologies, including sensors, lift systems and special lighting systems, the CBC reported. 

Although the research ostensibly is to assist older adults living at home, the technology uses involved, including sensors and robotics, often are equally applicable among independent living and community living settings for older adults.

The research will take place at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. 

In addition to the interior living research space, UM also is launching an outdoor component  that will test technology for older adults with mobility concerns, and how solutions can be addressed for those who have to move through cold-weather climates, according to UM’s Health Sciences research chairwoman, Jacquie Ripat, PhD. 

“I believe we are just on the cusp of the technological revolution,” Ripat said in a statement. “In the coming years, we can expect to witness the widespread adoption of social robots, augmented and virtual reality to address social isolation, and the integration of sensors into homes and even clothing to provide monitoring and support.”

In addition to physical applications, such as for lighting, the seniors living in the research space also will test out smartphone apps and other digital tools geared toward health diagnoses.

Many recent collaborations between universities and senior living providers involve caregiving training, as opposed to pure tech trial runs.

Conversely, senior living communities often are testing grounds themselves for university research, such as how residents perceive the introduction of robots.