Analysis

March 29, 2019

European startups push into VR healthcare despite industry gloom

We ask early-stage startups, a market leader and Europe's VR unicorn.


Kitty Knowles

8 min read

An inMotionVR therapy session.

2016 was dubbed the year of the VR hype. Goldman Sachs predicted the VR market would hit $80bn by 2025 ($35bn software vs $45bn hardware), and foresaw that healthcare would be the second most lucrative VR industry (after videogames) worth $5.1bn. In addition, companies like Oculus and China’s smartphone giant HTC launched their virtual reality headsets for consumers, and received much praise. It promised to revolutionise not only the world of videogames, but the world of healthcare as well – suggesting that VR healthcare was the next big thing. However, so far, the industry hasn't quite lived up to the hype – yet.

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A VR beach in CorpusVR.
A VR beach in CorpusVR.
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Kiki Coppelmanns with treating a patient with VR.
Kiki Coppelmanns with treating a patient with VR.
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One of Immersive Rehab's VR exercise settings.
One of Immersive Rehab's VR exercise settings.
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One of VRHealth's virtual punchbag scenarios.
One of VRHealth's virtual punchbag scenarios.
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An VR exercise game from Mindmaze.
A VR exercise game from Mindmaze.
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