Minneapolis-based Goodness Growth Holdings Inc., formerly known as Vireo Health International Inc., announced Monday that one of its subsidiaries is developing a suite of virtual reality applications that can be used by practitioners during psychedelic-based therapies.
Resurgent Biosciences is working with Cubicle Ninjas, a Chicago-based VR development firm, to build the following applications:
- A scalable VR platform for use in psychedelic medicine, which will provide support for the preparation phase, the peak experience phase and the post-experience integration phase.
- A psychedelic biofeedback VR research tool, which will focus on providing users simulated psychedelic and other VR experiences coupled with extensive biofeedback data collection with the goal of identifying digital biomarkers that predict which patients will have the best therapeutic outcomes with psychedelic therapy.
- A group integration experience, which will replicate a collective, interactive, group psychedelic experience by harnessing the power of VR to bring remote users into a shared virtual space before, during and after a peak psychedelic experience.
Resurgent has filed for a U.S. patent and expects to have working prototypes by the end of the year.
Goodness Growth said the technology is being developed to allow medical practitioners to administer psychedelic medicine in a consistent and controlled environment.
"The therapeutic potential of psychedelic medicines at least partially depends on an effective preparation phase to ensure that patients are in the right mindset and in beneficial surroundings in order to create a positive experience, which is often referred to as set and setting," said Chairman and CEO Dr. Kyle Kingsley. "We believe that VR programs allow practitioners to better prepare and guide patients through their experiences and may optimize therapeutic approaches with psychedelic medicines."
Earlier this month, Goodness Growth rebranded from Vireo Health and announced Resurgent would expand into intellectual property development and clinical research efforts into psychedelic medicine.
Resurgent was formed as a non-plant-touching ancillary to separate Goodness Growth's cannabis companies from its intellectual property portfolio, which includes packaging.
