TBI Cafe

Over 36,000 Kiwis experience Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) per year. TBI patients often experience severe cognitive fatigue, which impairs their ability to cope well in public/social settings. Rehabilitation can involve taking people into social settings with a therapist so that they can relearn how to interact in these environments. However, this is a time-consuming, expensive and difficult process.

To address this, we’ve created the TBI Cafe, a VR tool designed to help TBI patients cope with their injury and practice interacting in a cafe. In this application, people in VR practice ordering food and drink while interacting with virtual characters. Different types of distractions are introduced, such as a crying baby and loud conversations, which are designed to make the experience more stressful, and let the user practice managing stressful situations. Clinical trials with the software are currently underway.