Egypt-based healthtech VRapeutic has joined the Canadian MakerLaunch accelerator programme at the University of Ottawa, media reports said. By joining the programme, the startup plans to expand in the Canadian market.
In the 48-week programme, VRapeutic will work on product development, in addition to adding more features and enriching the user experience in its existing products. It is reported that the healthtech will also work on designing and implement its first marketing campaign in Canada.
VRapeutic designs 3D virtual environments that are especially tailored to instill diverse life skills in children, including social, cognitive, motor, and academic skills. It also offers unique cloud accounts for every doctor and child, where the performance data and the request modules for every child can be accessed.
In this regard, Ahmad Al Kabbany, who founded VRapeutic in 2017, told the media, “We develop our own curricula for essential life skills, featuring unique technical features, customisability, and a design centered around widely-adopted assessment tools. We are pioneering the integration between virtual environments, bio-sensors, and machine intelligence to enrich the interactions inside the environments.
“We have had a research-oriented approach, in which every product is developed and validated under the supervision of renowned professionals. Hence, we know that the first stage has been time demanding, before we can scale up sales, which establishes our long-term scientific credibility.”
Last year, the startup was also among five African companies to have received the UNICEF Innovation Fund. The selected companies benefitted from the seed investment provided by UNICEF and gained access to support from UNICEF’s innovation team and networks.