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A year ago, we announced the takeover of Cayceo, which was then a competitor specialized in the hospital field. This merger was motivated by the desire to combine Lumeen's large catalog of 360 videos with the interactive 3D worlds of Cayceo to offer the most complete therapeutic virtual reality solution for the medical sector. This vision has now become a reality.

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A dreamlike universe assumed to stimulate the imagination

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When your patients embark on “The Ice Cave”, “The Enchanted Cabin”, “In the heart of the lagoon” or “Through the clouds”, they are immersed in a universe designed by passionate artists. Each of the environments respects a common artistic direction to maintain coherence in the settings and characters.

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This dreamlike universe, which seems like something out of a dream, does not seek to get closer to reality, but to stimulate the imagination of patients. Visually, the imaginary version of the pink flamingo will not look like a real flamingo. And that's the point! In an imaginary universe, our brain accepts a pink flamingo that is not a flamingo. In a realistic universe, our brain will be much more critical and will look for flaws in realism.

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We do not want patients to question the realism of the environments, which can take them out of their dissociated state. Especially since current virtual reality headsets do not offer very realistic interactive experiences. The dream world is therefore totally relevant and assumed. Medical hypnosis practitioners will make a connection here, because, in their practice, they precisely exploit the imagination of their patients to help them visualize calm and soothing environments. Moreover, our virtual reality device is used by many hypnotherapists who use it prior to acts to relax their patients and stimulate their imagination to facilitate their entry into a state of hypnosis.

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Long and captivating scenarios

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Specially designed for hypno analgesia and hypno sedation in a hospital environment, the scenarios of the Cayceo experiences are long and captivating enough to carry and keep your patients in a relaxed state throughout the duration of the treatment.

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The “Through the Clouds” experience is the longest. The script lasts almost an hour. The settings, the atmosphere, the characters and the sounds change over time. You start at sunrise with soft light, then the luminosity subsides until a beautiful sunset in mauve and orange tones. On this journey, you will encounter a whale, a rabbit, a butterfly, a butterfly, a dancer or even a giraffe, all in the shape of clouds in the middle of the sky. And of course, you will also come across a few flying pink flamingos!

This allows patients to continue to be surprised to keep their attention for long minutes. These are not repetitive loops as other solutions can offer, which often end up boring the patient and taking him out of his relaxed state.

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Scripts designed for every environment

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We can't talk about Cayceo, let alone the mascot, Cloudy! Cloudy is the little cloud that accompanies you everywhere and speaks to you. It is he who guides patients in their relaxed state.

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Besides being very cute, Cloudy is professional and versatile! Her speech was designed by expert hypnotherapists and the script is different for each environment. In addition to referring to settings and characters to enhance hypnotic induction, the scripts were designed with specific therapeutic goals in mind. For example, some environments and the scripts that accompany them target different medical indications. Thus, some experiences are preferred for the management of preoperative anxiety while others are more relevant for the management of pain. In addition, Cloudy also knows how to talk to children, tutorial scripts are available. And he masters five languages to adapt to foreign patients!

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An interactive experience in real-time 3D

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Real-time 3D refers to the technology used by game engines to generate and deliver three-dimensional content instantly. In our context of application in virtual reality, real-time 3D offers two major benefits:

• It facilitates the creation of highly immersive experiences. By projecting a slightly different image into each eye, it mimics the natural distance between our eyes, offering a true sense of perspective and depth.
• It enriches the experience by integrating interactivity, aimed at surprising and engaging the patient, thus optimizing their level of distraction.

Real-time 3D therefore offers a profoundly different experience from that of immersive videos, which may appear flatter and which do not offer the possibility of adding interactivity. Studies have also shown that a high degree of immersion, combined with interactivity, optimizes the distracting abilities of virtual reality, thus helping to reduce the perception of pain*.

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A tool that adapts to the treatment path

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Depending on the treatment path, the device will be used before, during or after an anxiogenic and/or painful act. Pre- or post-operatively, it's quite simple, the sessions will often have a fixed duration of 10, 20 or 30 minutes. On the other hand, when the helmet is used during an act, you never really know how long the act will last. You can allow 20 minutes, but sometimes the act will go faster and you do not want to take the patient out of his relaxed state suddenly. Sometimes, the procedure will take longer than expected and you certainly don't want to finish the experience before the end of the treatment. This is why we have the option of an adaptable duration in real time. This makes it possible to trigger the alarm phase at any time. This allows healthcare teams to trigger it at the right time, when the treatment is over, and allows the patient to exit his relaxed state calmly with the induction phase, which lasts only one minute.

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In addition, it is possible, at a key moment in an act, to trigger additional distractions in the experience. This makes it possible, for example, to amplify the distraction of attention at the fateful moment, when one is about to make an injection, a puncture, an incision...

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Conclusion

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The addition of Cayceo experiences to our catalog is the culmination of a vision and work of more than a year, which marks a major evolution of our product. This will allow us to offer a more successful solution for the management of anxiety and pain; and to improve the clinical effects of our device for the comfort of patients. This marks an important step towards our goal of building the European leader in new immersive therapies.

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Over the past few months, our development teams have done a remarkable job of enhancing these experiences and making them compatible with the new Pico G3 headset. I want to congratulate them, the result is simply amazing. As of today, we are happy to offer this content for the benefit of patients and caregivers!

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* Hoffman, H.G., Patterson, D.R., & Carrougher, G.J. (2000). Use of Virtual Reality for Adjunctive Treatment of Adult Burn Pain During Physical Therapy: A Controlled Study: The Clinical Journal of Pain, 16 (3), 244-250. https://doi.org/10.1097/00002508-200009000-00010