Our final Company of the Month for 2025 is with NI Immersive Technology company, Propeer Solutions.
Director, Chris Thomas shares with us the journey of Propeer Solutions, and the goal of creating immersive experiences that matter.
“Our first real contact with the health sector came through Marie Curie back in 2018. We were asked to create 360-degree footage of iconic Northern Ireland landmarks—such as the Mournes, Murlough Beach, and Crawfordsburn. The idea was to allow bed-bound patients to simply use voice control to say where they wanted to go and “transport” them there. The feedback was astonishing, and it was the first time we truly realised just how powerful immersive technology could be for patient well-being”, said Chris.
From there, the journey evolved rapidly and the company was asked by Marie Curie and Parkinson’s NI to create an exercise programme for a small group of patients.
“The challenge wasn’t just clinical; it was about making exercise fun and gamified to keep users interested and pushing for better scores and this is where our successful partnership with Queen’s University Belfast began, when they asked if they could conduct research on the programme and provided a PhD student to capture and analyse the data—a collaborative model we still use today.
“I got to sit with the patients during that project, and I’ll never forget one specific moment. An elderly woman, who looked extremely frail, asked if she could try. When she put on the headset, she was transported into a mountain range and began her exercise programme. When she finished, she took the headset off, her face lit up with a huge smile, and said, “That was amazing, can I have another go?”
“I have, what I believe is the best role in the company, split between strategic project management and immersive technology development. My most critical responsibility is getting out there and connecting directly with our partners. I constantly engage with professionals in health and education to see exactly where the pain points are and where technology can genuinely help.
“My role bridges the gap between clinical or training needs and our technical capability, taking a specific challenge and working with my team to design a robust, immersive solution. This hands-on, collaborative approach is not just a preference; it’s our core company value: we rely on those with the professional know-how—the clinicians, the educators, the charity workers—to co-develop our platforms. This ensures that what we build is not only highly beneficial but perfectly suited for the end-user. Ultimately, the “why” for me is rooted in the patient stories from our very first projects—it’s about building solutions that make a positive difference in people’s lives.
“We’re based in Lisburn, a location that gives us central access to the entire ecosystem the health trusts, universities, and the charities—that make up Northern Ireland’s thriving life and health sciences sector. Northern Ireland has proven to be an exceptional place to grow a company like ours. In our experience, the business here is largely built on word of mouth and proven capability. If you do a good job, you are enthusiastically recommended to the next key player.
“We have seen this effect drive our entire journey. Our successful initial work with Marie Curie and Parkinson’s NI led directly to commissions from the School of Nursing and the British Heart Foundation (BHF), for whom we developed a mobile platform. This solution helped patients with an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) by providing a virtual tour to prepare them for their surgery and hospital stay. This word-of-mouth momentum culminated in what I would call our landmark moment: being approached by Queen’s University Belfast and the Northern Health and Social Care Trust. This was a pivotal opportunity to apply our expertise in immersive technology to a much more complex and critical area: enhancing trauma therapy, which formed the foundation of our current platforms. Our core mission is to leverage immersive technology to solve critical problems in health and education, all co-developed with local experts. Our product portfolio currently revolves around two major platforms, each using a different facet of immersive technology to deliver powerful, measurable results:
Envirocreate: Precision Mental Health Therapy. Envirocreate—is a therapeutic tool designed to support the treatment of mental health conditions.
- What it does: The platform allows a clinician, using an intuitive web interface, to recreate and personalise a trauma-related environment from a patient’s life. They can upload real-world images or simply input location details to build a custom, immersive 3D environment. The patient then safely experiences this environment using a VR headset under the guidance of a therapist.
- The Innovation: Developed in collaboration with Queen’s University Belfast and both the Northern Health and Social Care Trust and the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust, Envirocreate directly addresses immense pressure on mental health services in Northern Ireland. While initially focused on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the platform is also being trialled for use with social anxieties and has the potential to expand into other areas, such as OCD and depression. We believe this solution has the potential to provide a gold standard of therapy.
- The Impact: Our work with the Trusts began in 2019, and the project has been underpinned by crucial investment from Innovate UK. We are currently creating a roadmap for Medical Device Regulation (MDR) compliance. Our focus is on bringing this high-impact, clinically validated solution into routine mental health care settings to potentially reduce the number of therapy sessions required, leading to faster recovery and significant cost savings.
VITAL: Virtual Intelligent Training and Adaptive Learning. VITAL is our AI-powered virtual training solution. This platform emerged in direct response to user feedback from a previous project, a Classroom Assistant Training VR platform co-developed with SERC Colleges. Users loved the immersion but provided the critical insight that they needed unrestricted conversation instead of a fixed, branch narrative. That need for real-world unpredictability was the catalyst for integrating advanced AI.
What it does: VITAL uses cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence to power conversational avatars in a realistic. A student can practice a difficult conversation—such as a therapeutic interview or managing a crisis—and the AI avatar will respond dynamically, realistically, and emotionally accurately, just like a real person. The Access: Crucially, the platform is accessible either through a dedicated VR headset for maximum immersion or via a desktop application, ensuring flexibility and wide-scale use across different institutions.
The Innovation: The real power of VITAL lies in its customisation. From an intuitive web application, users can entirely create their own role-play scenarios. This involves setting the environment, picking the avatar, providing a personality and mood for that avatar, and setting objectives for the training. This means the scenario can be anything from a high-stakes job interview to dealing with a patient who has just found out they have a life-threatening illness. It focuses on developing core soft skills, including communication and decision-making, allowing users to safely repeat and refine complex scenarios until they master them.
Where it has been tested:
- Social Work: We are working closely with the Northern Health and Social Care Trust (NHSCT) to integrate VITAL into social work training for areas like safeguarding and communicating under pressure.
- Queen’s University Belfast (QUB): QUB tested VITAL with their Social Work students in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, preparing them for sensitive scenarios.
- Department of Health (DoH): The DoH requested a trial for trainers working within the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Ambulance Service, and Emergency Department teams, among others, to assess preparedness in high-pressure environments.
- High Schools: The platform’s development was guided by feedback from behavioural specialists who connected with a variety of schools, including those focused on special educational needs, to ensure scenarios reflected a wide range of learner behaviours.
- International: QUB coordinated an international study with institutions like the University of New Brunswick (Canada), Virginia Commonwealth University (USA), and Taipei Medical University (Taiwan), demonstrating the platform’s global relevance.
“Working with HIRANI has been exceptionally valuable for us. The organisation provides a crucial connection point between innovators and the health sector, which is exactly what a co-development company like ours needs. The most helpful aspects have been the platform and the connections. Being featured gives us a platform to showcase our technologies to a highly engaged audience of policymakers, academics, and clinicians. Furthermore, the opportunities to attend events, such as the Spring Conference, allow us to network directly with key health professionals who are driving change on the ground. These interactions are invaluable; they lead to the feedback and partnerships that ultimately refine our products and ensure they deliver real clinical value.”
