May’s Mindset-XR Innovation Support Programme company spotlight features Braingaze, a company leveraging groundbreaking insights into the relationship between eye movements and cognition to support people with ADHD. By applying this science, Braingaze develops and delivers best-in-class digital solutions that meaningfully improve the lives of both patients and clinicians.
Last month marked another milestone for Braingaze with the launch of a new NHS pilot in West London. The team also showcased their gaze-controlled gaming therapy for ADHD at two major events: the NHS Mental Health Network annual conference in Birmingham on 15 April, and the Health + AI Tech Show in London on 29 April.
Previous studies have shown promising results, with gaze-controlled gaming delivering a 56% reduction in ADHD symptoms in children who used the therapy regularly over a three-week period.
What three pieces of advice would you give budding innovators?
- Secure clinical and regulatory buy-in early to navigate complex hurdles like MHRA approvals.
- Build strategic, multi-disciplinary consortiums combining core tech with clinical execution.
- Prioritise real-world scalability and autonomous delivery to ensure equitable access from day one.
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How has user feedback, particularly from patients and clinicians, shaped your product?
User feedback, particularly from patients and clinicians, has played a pivotal role in shaping our product development. In November, our academic partner, Goldsmiths, University of London, hosted an intensive hackathon that brought together over 50 stakeholders, including clinicians, patients, therapists, parents, subject-matter experts, and game designers. This collaborative environment enabled participants to explore concepts, exchange ideas, and engage directly with a diverse range of gaze-controlled virtual reality (VR) games.
One of the key insights emerging from this exercise was the critical importance of ‘anchoring’ users within the virtual environment. While gaze control introduces an engaging and immersive interaction paradigm, it can also create a sense of disorientation or “floating” if used in isolation. As a result, the integration of complementary, non-gaze-based navigation mechanisms has been identified as essential to ensuring a balanced, stable, and user-friendly experience.
“Playing these cognitive games using your eye movements as the controller have had a profound effect on my son’s ability to focus his attention.”
Rafa, father of 8 year-old boy
What is the biggest challenge you have faced so far in developing your innovation?
The biggest challenge for us so far has been navigating the rapidly evolving ecosystem of current and emerging headsets, particularly in relation to their varying price points and technical capabilities. Closely linked to this is the complexity of achieving seamless multi-platform integration – specifically, ensuring that virtual reality applications can interoperate effectively with mobile device experiences, thereby enabling a consistent and continuous user journey across devices.
What type of support are you seeking most from readers to help drive your project forward?
We’ve been fortunate to have identified a leading Education trust to co-lead our validation track which will start soon. However, we would love to broaden the scope of the validation, working with more schools or other settings where we can validate the ADHD symptom reducing effects.
We believe the future of VR therapeutic gaming is for it to be integrated into multi device game therapy protocols. We’d love to hear from clinicians, educators or funders that agree with us, and would like to help us further expand the games portfolio and the evidence base around it. Drop us a line at info@braingaze.com and we will certainly get back to you.
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