Rey, an Austin, Texas-based mental health and wellness startup integrating immersive tools and digital interventions with teletherapy, announced the debut of its virtual mental wellness platform.

The platform, which is powered by OxfordVR, a spin-out of Oxford University, will initially be available across Texas with a road map to reach the rest of the U.S. in 2022. The initial pricing starts at $36 per session and a monthly subscription price of $295, although the company also noted it would be offering users a 50 percent discount for the first month with the platform.

The service combines individualized care with VR tools to elevate treatment progress to retrain the brain. It offers customized therapy sessions designed to trigger the same psychological and physiological reactions as real-life situations. The goal is to get what patients learn from VR to stay with them in the real world.

Rey, which launched in April 2021, uses a personalized combination of cognitive behavioral therapy, talk therapy, medication capabilities, and clinically validated tech tools such as virtual reality (VR).

The company specializes in collaborative care with a full-time staff of multidisciplinary specialists, including experts across CBT, EMDR, meditation, mindfulness and life coaching.

The company was founded by Deepak Gopalakrishna, a geneticist who moved into the business side and has launched other biotech startups. In July, the company announced that it has raised $10 million in new investment, bringing its total Series A funding round to $26 million.

OxfordVR, was founded is focused on the use of VR in severe mental illness. The company founder Dr. Daniel Freeman, professor of clinical psychology at Oxford University, is the senior scientific advisor to Rey for development of new automated therapeutics. Potential future treatments include obsessive-compulsive disorder and substance use disorder.

The number of patients with depression and anxiety has surged as psychologists responded to the Coronavirus pandemic, according to a November 2020 survey by the American Psychological Association.

The vast majority (96%) of psychologists said they were treating patients remotely--64% were treating all patients remotely – and 32% were treating some patients in person and some remotely.

The majority of psychologists (63%) said they found treating patients remotely more challenging than treating patients in person, with around a quarter of survey respondents reporting  “a fair amount of or more” challenges or barriers for patients to receive treatment via telehealth.