A Northern Ireland consortium, MindTrack 360, has been awarded £300,000 through Innovate UK’s Mindset round three funding to further develop its pioneering virtual reality (VR) approach to addiction recovery.
CEO, Daithi Conlon, (pictured) welcoming the award said: “Through successful Mindset round two funding, we partnered with VR technology specialists eXRt Intelligent Healthcare to explore whether VR could address clients disengaging before completing a full course of therapy. Following the success of the initial project, this round three funding will support a new 18-month research project which will bring together five partners — MindTrack 360, eXRt Intelligent Healthcare, Queen’s University Belfast and two local charities, ASCERT and Upper Springfield Development Trust LTD.”
The collaboration will focus on developing, testing, and validating a VR-enhanced recovery tool designed to strengthen engagement and improve outcomes for people on their recovery journey.
“We’ve always known our programme can make a real difference, but sustaining engagement is the hardest part of recovery,” said Daithi.
“This funding gives us the opportunity to harness the power of VR to create a more immersive and supportive experience — one that helps people stay engaged for longer and build lasting change at their own pace.”
These awards were part of round three funding in which HIRANI were delighted to partner with UK Research and Innovation and Health Innovation Network South London to promote and bring Innovate UK’s £20 million opportunity to Northern Ireland.
“During round one of the Mindset funding there were no NI applications and the HIRANI team developed a close strategic relationship with the Innovate UK Mindset team and we proactively promoted and ran events to matchmake proposals and showcased the competition as it was launched.
“This resulted in a number of applications and we are very happy that this excellent project has been successfully funded in round two and three.
“Not only is this reaching back into academia and connecting researchers to new tech companies to pivot into mental health, it also raises the profile of this need in NI and creates new discussion forums,” said HIRANI CEO, Joann Rhodes MBA
Find out more about MindTrack 360 at https://mindtrack360.com/
