Curebase, a platform for decentralized clinical trials, is partnering with AppliedVR to run five trials to test the effectiveness of virtual reality for treating chronic pain.

The companies said the one-year partnership will focus on studying a self-administered, at-home VR therapy program. Curebase will manage patient recruitment, consent, and engagement, and collect patient-reported outcomes data.

"Virtual reality holds tremendous potential to both improve and lower the cost of how we treat chronic pain while also reducing America's dependence on pharmacological interventions,” AppliedVR president and cofounder Josh Sackman said in a statement.

“Demonstrating that requires effective clinical trials, and Curebase's technology gives us a user-friendly, end-to-end solution that is highly workflow oriented and specialized for digital therapeutic study designs."

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the use of decentralized clinical trials to continue studies while limiting in-person interactions.

AppliedVR has conducted other studies on its tools. The company’s EaseVRx landed FDA Breakthrough Device designation for its tech to reduce fibromyalgia and chronic lower back pain, and in March swept up $29 million in Series A funding. 

The Independence Blue Cross Foundation is partnering with Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic and NeuroFlow to provide the mental health technology company’s software to frontline workers. 

The program will initially roll out to nurses and other frontline workers at three hospitals in the Philadelphia area, but Trinity could add more locations. 

Workers can use NeuroFlow to record their mood and sleep patterns, and to access mental health resources. A clinical-care team will monitor population-level trends and respond to individual “urgent alerts” to head off mental health crises. 

“Most will remember the devastating physical toll the pandemic took on our population, but it has also been an awakening for mental health and the daily challenges we all face with stress and anxiety,” Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic president and CEO Jim Woodward said in a statement.

“Our healthcare workers need the same kind of access to care as our patients do. This collaboration with the Independence Blue Cross Foundation and NeuroFlow gives our staff another pillar of support and a better way to quantify when workloads are getting too strained.”

The pandemic has been particularly hard on frontline healthcare workers. In a Kaiser Family Foundation/Washington Post survey released in April, 62% of them reported that worry or stress due to COVID-19 has had a negative impact on their mental health.

Linus Health, a digital brain health company, is teaming up with Cognito Therapeutics, which provides digital therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

The companies said they work on opposite ends of detection and treatment, where Linus can screen for and monitor cognitive issues, and Cognito can provide digital therapies.

They also plan to conduct studies to evaluate the value of their combined tools. In March, Cognito announced results from a Phase 2 trial that suggests its gamma frequency neuromodulation therapy slowed declines in memory and cognition in Alzheimer's patients with mild to moderate disease.

“We are advancing next-generation prescription digital therapeutics that show the potential to safely modify the course of disease progression in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders,” Brent Vaughan, CEO of Cognito Therapeutics, said in a statement.

“We are excited to partner with Linus Health, as our non-invasive neuro-physiology treatments uniquely fit alongside Linus’s cognitive assessment and monitoring platform to support home-based care with validated patient outcomes.”