Physiotherapy and VR

Everyone is familiar with physiotherapy. And with VR. But not necessarily with their combination.

Curiously, even among physiotherapists, there is still missionary work to be done in this area; in fact, research shows that around half of the physiotherapists do not know exactly how to assess this innovative combination and the benefits it brings to both patient and practitioner. Wisse Kommunikatie has helped Corpus VR, one of the leading VR solutions for physiotherapists, to change that. And the company is excellently equipped to do so; not only because of its solid and large client base, but also because of the expertise of its initiators and employees.

Exercises using VR

The approach is as simple as it is effective: the physiotherapist uses Virtual Reality to let his patient do his exercises.

Part of the reason why the combination is so effective lies in the fact that Virtual Reality games increase patients' intrinsic motivation and therefore their therapy compliance. Because of the ‘playful’ virtual environment, patients exercise more often, perform their exercises better and thus recover faster. Moreover, they don't even need to leave their homes to go and do their exercises at the practice, as everything can be set up remotely. When you consider that 76% of people do not complete their traditional physiotherapy regimen, you can also consider that every little gain in this area has a positive health and financial impact for both patients and society.

Cleverly deployed simple technology

Moreover, the technology, that is in fact quite simple, plays an almost disproportionate role in the combination of the concepts.

By cleverly integrating VR into therapy, traditional manual work actually becomes science. Indeed, the client follows his therapy in the VR worlds while feedback from sensors is loaded into the dashboard. The software then automatically adjusts the difficulty of the training. Of course, the therapist can also turn the knobs and make exercises harder or lighter. At whatever level the patient acts, the system automatically tracks his progress.

PR and communication

Based on the ‘start-up status’ and the different target groups, we developed a large number of components and implemented numerous activities.

We started with our ‘Strategic Insights Index’, our baseline research used to determine what is already known about the issue and the solution, and by whom, which influencers we can follow and engage, and which trends and issues they (help) address. Using the information from the ‘Strategic Insights Index’, we created an awareness campaign that targeted not only patients, but also physiotherapists themselves who did not know about VR in their field, or were not yet ready for it. We then switched to our marcomm concept Journalistic Content Automation, which directs all media coverage, distributor newsletters and LinkedIn attention back to a specially set-up landing page in our marketing automation tool SharpSpring. Lead generation thus became a concrete and simple part of the campaign.

Digital Authority Program

Our Digital Authority Programme deserves a special mention.

As part of this programme, we created 3 weekly posts for LinkedIn, which without exception stayed away from selling the solution as much as possible, but mainly aimed at sharing knowledge and increasing the thought leadership of Corpus VR's experts.