LOS ANGELES, CA, December 10, 2021 /24-7PressRelease/ — Contact-free and social distancing are terms that have become much familiar in the aftermath of COVID-19. The latest technologies in areas close to our lives are also emerging in line with this trend. Artificial intelligence, big data, VR (virtual reality), and AR (augmented reality) provide us with new realistic content and enable us to lead a more advanced daily life through personalized program development or platform services. The Korean government is focusing on expanding contact-free services for our daily lives. Through this, it plans to prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and secure a leading position in the global contact-free service market in line with the era of digital transformation.
In the era of With Corona and Post-Corona, contact-free technologies and services are expected to grow rapidly. Accordingly, the National IT Industry Promotion Agency(NIPA) and Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) are discovering and supporting leading contact-free services from life-to-face areas that people can feel to protect their daily lives and boost economic vitality from infectious diseases such as COVID-19.
Among them is a “Traffic accident PTSD VR digital treatment device” developed by MegaWorks Co., Ltd. and Studio Coin Co., Ltd. It is a virtual reality content-based treatment program developed as a life-related self service using VR digital treatment devices.
Mega Works CTO Kim Tae-yong said, “Based on the number of insurance claims, there are 1.2 million minor traffic accidents in Korea every year, and many of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders.” He further added, “These patients visit hospitals and receive various kinds of dialogue-based exposure therapy such as counseling and interviews, but there have been varying degrees of success in achieving the expected treatment results due to the disparities in practitioner’s treatment methods, as well as the difficulties in immersing oneself in a reenactment using just “imagination.”
Traffic accident Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is caused by a fear of going through another car accident or an aversion to traffic accidents all together, and is considered a kind of trauma. To overcome this, an individual must face the experience as vividly as possible with complete visual immersion. The “Traffic accident PTSD VR digital treatment device” is effective in finding and treating the causes to the trauma because it allows doctors to objectively guide the treatment process, meanwhile patients can immerse themselves into the moment of the accident virtually.
As of 2022, the domestic Neuropsychiatric digital treatment market is estimated to be a 3 billion won industry, and it is expected to grow an average of 8.12% annually, to about 4.8 billion won by 2028. According to CTO Kim Tae-yong, “The global digital treatment market is still in the early stages of actually becoming a market, and regulations related to digital therapy are already in place in Korea, so it is expected to grow considering the pace of completion of regulatory standards and the growth of domestic and foreign leading markets”in addition, “The Digital Healthcare industry, the leading market for digital treatments, is estimated to have grown from 4.7 trillion won in 2014 to 14 trillion won in 2020, thus we can further expect to see rapid growth in the domestic digital treatments market due to institutional support and socioeconomic needs.”In particular, CTO Kim Tae-yong added, “It is expected that digital treatments in Korea will be able to meet the medical demands of treatment areas that have thus far been insufficient in treating neuropsychiatric diseases.”
The global neuropsychiatric digital treatment market is expected to grow roughly 20% annually from $160 million in 2022 to $260 million in 2025. Market research firm Grand View Research predicts that the digital treatment market will grow 20% annually from $1.7 billion in 2017 to $9.4 billion by 2025. In particular, the target disease field is also expanding from neuropsychiatric diseases to chronic diseases such as diabetes, as well as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
Mega Works, which developed a virtual reality content-based treatment program, is currently developing a VR-linked PTSD psychological rehabilitation device with the Department of Mental Health at Jeonnam National University Hospital, and is jointly conducting IRB clinical efficacy verification procedures with Jeonnam National University Hospital in order to verify its effectiveness. CTO Kim Tae-yong said, “Moving forward, Mega Works plans on expanding its demonstrations and raising the treatment program’s reliability, with its collaborations with Hanmaeum Mental Health Clinic, Gwangju Mirae Hospital, and Donggu Mental Health Center. He further added, “We plan to expand our range of treatment programs to treat other forms of PTSD by building digital treatment platforms that target industrial accidents, anxiety, and compulsive behaviors.”
Meanwhile, Mega Works, which is using their traffic accident PTSD VR digital treatment device to spearhead the provision and growth of life-related self-care services, is a research institute that was established with the sole purpose of developing Digital Therapeutics technology, a new paradigm in the fields of diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and management related to mental health.
Through this project, the company has been involved in monitoring daily symptoms, developing contents for disease education, monitoring daily symptoms, developing disease education chatbots, monitoring PTSD, and providing self-care service apps. The participating company, Studio Coin, which specializes in developing educational content using realistic experience (AR, VR), has taken on the role of constructing more realistic reenactment scenarios using virtual reality content by upgrading their VR simulations of car traffic accidents with the implementation of city drive and accident locations (intersection, straight lines, curves), accident severity, as well as weather and time.
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