Want to find out more about our Mindset-XR Innovation Support Programme?
Sign up to our monthly newsletter and keep up to date with all the latest news
Click here
Mindset-XR Innovation Support Programme company spotlight: Animorph / CrossSense
November 12, 2025Our Mindset-XR Innovation Support Programme spotlight for November is on Animorph and their spin-off company CrossSense.
Animorph is a London-based co-operative, founded in 2016, which develops immersive software to enhance human potential. It specialises in creating applications for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality by integrating artificial intelligence.
Accountable to a social value policy that prioritises fairness and equity, the company's multidisciplinary team brings together expertise in software engineering, machine learning, service design, neuroscience and psychology.
This unique combination of skills has enabled Animorph to secure and deliver projects with significant impact, such as StayingWell XR which helps people living with serious mental health conditions to identify their early waning signs of relapse.
CrossSense is a spin-out from Animorph. Its specific purpose is to advance Animorph's primary project: an augmented reality (AR) smartglasses application. Recently funded by Round 3 of Mindset-XR funding, CrossSense applies AI to alleviate cognitive impairments and support individuals with mental health conditions including depression and anxiety.
Below, we hear from co-founder Szczepan Orlins, who shares insights about the two companies and their innovative approaches to cognitive health and wellbeing.
What three pieces of advice would you give budding innovators?
- Solve a real problem collaboratively. Work directly with end-users and directly affected stakeholders from the start. This co-development process grounds your ideas and ensures the final solution is genuinely fit for purpose.
- Build a coalition for change. Actively seek out individuals, such as clinicians, managers or commissioners, who are open to novel approaches and can support piloting your solution in a real-world setting.
- Share your work early and often, even when you know it needs improving and how. Embrace vulnerability, every idea can be improved, and feedback brings new perspectives and motivates.
What's the most exciting fact you have about the use of XR in mental health?
The VR CBT solution, gameChange, has led to significantly greater reductions in anxious avoidance and distress in everyday situations among individuals with psychosis compared to treatment as usual, especially for those experiencing high or severe agoraphobic avoidance.
gameChange is a research project led by the University of Oxford, Oxford Health, Royal College of Art, McPin Foundation, OxfordVR, NHS Trusts, lived experience groups and other individuals.
How has user feedback shaped your product?
Feedback from patients, clinicians, and allied health professionals has been transformational. It has enabled us to rapidly generate, evaluate, and translate ideas into our software. This co-design process acts as a ‘co-translation’, where diverse stakeholders find common ground. This way we only build what is genuinely needed.
What is the biggest challenge you have faced so far in developing your innovation?
One of the toughest challenges was delivering our first study while simultaneously adapting the software to evolving hardware requirements. An even greater hurdle was shifting the team’s mindset from focusing solely on development to taking on direct coordination and providing technical support for the lead experimenter during study sessions.
The success of the study also relied heavily on our research partner’s management of protocol and ethics, which proved essential in achieving strong, reliable results.
Why should the health and care system be excited about your innovation?
Our innovation, delivered through our spin-off company CrossSense, brings the promise of hyper-personalised, real-time cognitive support into everyday life.
By using smartglasses that interpret a user’s surroundings, our AI assistant guides individuals through Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) with protocols that continuously adapt to their behaviour over time.
This approach tackles cognitive impairment as a transdiagnostic marker, giving Memory Clinics and outpatient mental health services a powerful new tool to enhance patient independence and improve outcomes.
How could your innovation tackle inequalities in mental health?
All projects delivered through Animorph or CrossSense are developed with experts by experience. Through this collaboration, we strive for equitable access to solutions.
Through CrossSense, we have proactively championed accessibility by creating smartphone-compatible and web-based versions of our tools when developing solutions for advanced platforms, such as AR smartglasses.
We believe device-agnostic, open solutions are fundamental to widening reach and reducing digital barriers in mental health care.
How is user patient involvement incorporated?
We always begin with co-design to understand needs and establish core requirements. We then regularly test prototypes and incorporate feedback prior to formal studies. This involvement is so integral that our study protocols are directly informed by people with lived experience.
Finally, we follow up with participants post-study and keep them informed of the project's progress.
What XR success stories would you like to share with us?
We recently finished our CrossSense study #2, funded by Longitude Prize on Dementia and VoxReality (EU Horizons). The study's main objective was to test whether using CrossSense improves quality of life and cognitive abilities of people with cognitive impairment both in tasks directly aided by the glasses (such as naming objects or discussing a scene with the AI assistant) and in broader thinking skills not directly linked to the device.
We were also investigating how the technology affects not only the end user but also their carer or companion. The questionnaires were administered before and after use of smartglasses to measure changes in wellbeing, memory, and general cognition. We found improvements on all outcomes after a single use of the app.
Service users said:
“I was blown away! It gave me clarity, and that’s what people are losing.”
“The more people have something like this, the better quality of life they’ll have.”
What type of support are you seeking most from readers to help drive your project forward?
We’d love to continue building relationships with NHS memory clinics, so if you are involved in that field at all anywhere in the UK, please email us on info@crosssense.com
