Provide healthcare professionals with a firsthand account of what it’s truly like to live with Parkinson’s disease psychosis, defined by hallucinations and delusions. We set out to create an interaction that would allow doctors to literally see through the eyes of their patients. The "What Are Your Patients Holding Back?" campaign is an immersive virtual reality experience designed to establish a visceral connection between physicians and patients. By transforming anecdotal accounts of hallucinations and delusions into terrifying, revelatory experiences, we aspired to equip physicians with an unparalleled entry point to empathize with the true nature of the disorder. The latest in the series features a choir of faceless children who appear in the back yard and end up waking the user in the middle of the night with a hauntingly discordant nursery rhyme.

A total of 4 virtual reality experiences were created to provide healthcare professionals with a visceral account of what their patients with PDP deal with daily. We created a disturbing and realistic 3-D experience of what PD hallucinations and delusions look and sound like. These experiences were optimized for 2 virtual reality platforms. With each scenario, doctors could look at the world from the perspective of a person living with PDP to experience symptoms firsthand. Each environment was created through CGI, using images, sound effects, and music to tell our story. The virtual reality experience “Choir” debuted on the Oculus Rift headset at neurology and psychology conventions in April 2016. Later that year, it was optimized for the Google Cardboard platform, so that the experiences could be hand-delivered by sales representatives at physicians’ offices. Overall, hundreds of doctors have engaged with the experience and expressed new appreciation for the disease.

Since the launch of the campaign, unaided awareness of PDP has increased from 29% to 61%. Since the launch of Google Cardboard, exposure to PDP information has gone from 24% to 61%. Twenty-five percent more MDs and 30% more psychologists now recall that PDP is a serious and challenging condition that is often unrecognized.(1,2) Since April 2016 and March 2017, 13% of target physicians have changed their minds and believe that it is important to intervene before symptoms of PDP become severe.(3) The experience was even published in Neurology in 2016 and characterized as a “Novel and effective educational tool.”(4)

References:

1. Awareness, Trial, Usage Report. Acadia Pharmaceuticals. December 2015.

2. Awareness, Trial, Usage Report. Acadia Pharmaceuticals. August 2016.

3. Awareness, Trial, Usage Report. Acadia Pharmaceuticals. April 2017.

4. Goldman J et al. “Experiencing Parkinson’s Disease Psychosis via Virtual Reality Simulation: A Novel and Effective Educational Tool.” Neurology. April 2016.