Healium Wins Procter & Gamble Ventures Innovation Challenge for COVID Stress Relief Product
Healium, the makers of a virtual stress relief product that’s powered by consumer wearables recently won the P & G Ventures Innovation Challenge which includes a $10,000 cash prize, the opportunity to partner with P&G Ventures, and an invitation to join a nationally-ranked accelerator with up to $200,000 in other benefits. Healium pitched the idea of a “digiceuticals aisle” to sell its mental health hygiene products alongside physical hygiene products in drugstores or other retailers.
“What can you buy at your local drugstore for your mental wellbeing?” said Sarah Hill, CEO of Healium. “A partner with Procter & Gamble’s global reach would allow us to more quickly get our digiceuticals in the hands of 157 million stressed consumers who are looking for drugless solutions to quickly downshift their nervous systems and escape their current realities.”
P&G Ventures, a startup studio within Procter & Gamble, is partnering with entrepreneurs, inventors, and startups to discover and create consumer products, brands, and businesses that solve people’s needs in categories new to P&G. P&G serves consumers around the world with one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, and leadership brands. The P&G community includes operations in approximately 70 countries worldwide.
“The Innovation Challenge enables P&G Ventures to discover and work with visionaries who share a mutual dedication to finding solutions that improve the way people live their lives,” said Leigh Radford, Senior Vice President and General Manager, P&G Ventures. “I truly believe P&G’s next big breakthrough innovation and brand will result from the collaboration of the best of an external partner like Healium and the best of P&G. We are excited to see where Healium and the broader digiceuticals category could go next.”
Healium is the world’s first immersive media product powered by the body’s electricity via consumer wearables like a smartwatch or EEG-sensing headband. It provides nature-based escapes in augmented or virtual reality that have the option to be controlled by the user’s brainwaves or heart rate. Unlike traditional meditation, Healium stories are visual, open-eyed escapes that allow the user to see their feelings control virtual worlds so they can learn to self-regulate their stress. In three peer-reviewed journals, Healium has been shown to reduce anxiety and improve mood in as little as four minutes, more of an impact than audio or 2D video alone.
“When you take a virtual trip to a beautiful 360 landscape, your brain believes what it sees and the nervous system calms down almost immediately. When combined with our biofeedback technology, Healium is a powerful tool to change your mood and your mind,” said Dr. Jeff Tarrant, Chief Scientist for Healium and Director of the Neuromeditation Institute.
In the wake of COVID 19 and the stress epidemic that’s followed, Healium has been deployed to the frontlines to fight compassion fatigue and burnout among healthcare workers, to corporations looking to give their remote workers some virtual peace, and to aging Veterans unable to physically travel to see their memorials in Washington, DC. Its experiences have been viewed more than 7 million times.
With 225 million wearables in the market currently generating 2D data dashboards, Healium’s patented technology and product are transforming how users interact with their biometric data by allowing them to not just track their data but interact with it.
Healium has been featured by Apple, National Geographic, Wallstreet Journal, and more for use cases ranging from anxiety to addiction. This is the sixth national group in the last year to recognize the certified women-owned business. In 2020, Healium was named a NASA iTech Finalist, selected for MassChallenge Houston, and won an Edison award for Health & Wellness Tech. The company closed a licensing deal to put Healium on up to 20 airlines to destress passengers during long haul flights, won pitch competitions at CES, the world’s largest technology show, took home a first-place finish at South by Southwest in XR, and was nominated for a Webby for Best Use of Augmented Reality. Healium was incubated at the Missouri Innovation Center and accelerated by Mizzou VMS, the Missouri Technology Corporation, ECJC Scale Up, the Women in XR Fund Cohort, Transformative Tech, and the Launch KC| Nueterra Health Accelerator.
You can get Healium on the Apple, Google Play, or Oculus stores by going here. https://www.tryhealium.com/buy/ Subscriptions start at less than a dollar a day for consumers. Enterprises can purchase Healium for their employees or clients by emailing hello@tryhealium.com.
For more information on Healium’s mental fitness products, please visit tryhealium.com.
