Project description
Embodiment technology for obesity treatment
Obesity represents a major health, economic and societal burden as it increases the risks for physical illnesses as well as healthcare costs. Existing treatments focus on the behavioural change of the obese patient and have limited and usually non-permanent results. Telemedicine and some virtual reality (VR) solutions have recently emerged as alternatives. However, they too are focussing on lifestyle and behavioural changes in a VR environment, failing to achieve permanent results. The EU-funded SOCRATES project is proposing conVRself, which is a VR platform that helps patients tackle the root causes of their obesity. The project will adapt the conVRself technology for use in a clinical setting. It will demonstrate the efficacy of embodiment technology and use conVRself as a proof of concept for other behavioural disorders.
Objective
Context
According to the WHO, approximately 23% of women and 20% of men are classified as obese. Approximately 69 billion euros is spent on healthcare issues related to dealing with overweight or obese patients in Europe every year.
Obesity not only increases the likelihood of many physical illnesses, such as diabetes and coronary artery disease but can also provoke mental health issues such as stress and depression.
There is a substantial unmet need to help reduce both the economic and public health burden of obesity.
Problem: Current treatments for obesity have limited effectiveness.
Treatments for obesity focus on trying to develop a behaviour change in the patients, predominantly trying to change their diet or take more exercise. However, these treatments have shown to be largely ineffective with most patients failing to lose weight in the medium to long term.
Telemedicine has been proposed as an alternative to this, with some Virtual Reality solutions beginning to penetrate the market. However, these solutions are essentially the same lifestyle behaviour change treatments in a VR environment. Over time, the patient returns to their previous weight.
Solution
conVRself is a VR platform that uses embodiment to treat obesity, by allowing the patient to see and interact with themselves. This allows them to target three aspects that are inherent with severe obesity:
- Recognition
- Self stigmatisation
- Self determination
conVRself allows patients to tackle the root causes of their obesity, rather than simply treating the symptoms.
Project Scope
SOCRATES will:
- Adapt the conVRself technology for treating obesity in a clinical setting
- validate the efficacy of embodiment technology in treating obesity
- use conVRself as a proof of concept for using embodiment techniques as a treatment for other behavioural disorders
- disseminate the results to promote the use of embodiment technology as an effective healthcare solution for treating behavioural conditions.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
08015 Barcelona
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.