Flintworks is bringing VR tech into mental health treatment

Tia Cummins is a clinical neuroscientist by trade, specialising in trauma care.

For her PhD research, she worked with Vietnam war veterans, some of whom had been suffering with PTSD for 50 years or more, with no treatments proving to be effective.

Before entering academia, she spent three years in the British Army, where she first became interested in mental health as it relates to military service.

Tia was also raised in Northern Ireland, a region with a recent history defined by conflict, frustration and pain. Trauma is part of the landscape there, and Tia’s mum suffered from PTSD.

“I became really frustrated by the problems in the mental health ecosystem,” Tia says.

“Those experiences have all come together to give me the tenacity and the drive to run a startup.”

The right tech at the right time

Today, along with co-founder Pete Martin, Tia heads up Flintworks, a digital health startup using virtual reality technology to treat complex mental health issues through exposure therapy — essentially placing people in difficult situations, safely, to aid their recovery.

In both a professional and personal sense, Tia is the right person to bring Flintworks to market. But this is also the right time for this product.

For about 30 years, researchers have been studying VR mental health treatments, but the research has never been spun out of the lab in a material way, Tia says.

Now, the technology has caught up to the theory. VR is accessible and cost-effective, no longer requiring excessive computing power or specialist hardware.

We’re also seeing a broader societal understanding of mental illness. People are more educated, more understanding and more open to a conversation.

The COVID-19 pandemic also increased mental health awareness, and shone a spotlight on health tech.

“COVID kind of forced technology into the clinician-patient relationship,” Tia explains.

“Those three prongs have come together to make this the optimal time for Flintworks.”

Expanding VR horizons

Initially, Flintworks was focused on the veteran community, and specifically PTSD. But through an early pilot with various sites and clinicians, it became clear the use cases could be much broader than that.

“Now our end-user focus is anyone who’s been through trauma,” Tia explains.

Once the tech is in the hands of a clinician, it can be adapted to meet the needs of their patient. That could mean recreating a specific experience, or building everyday scenarios like going to the supermarket or meeting a friend for a coffee.

“Because those scenarios are so broad, we can also cater for other disorders such as addiction or OCD,” Tia says.

Scenes can also be tailored to different languages and cultural settings.

“It’s a very flexible and versatile toolkit.

“Pretty much anything where you need to create a difficult scenario for somebody to get better, we can cater to that.”

Reflection and growth

Since the initial pilot, Flintworks has launched a prototype into the market, secured angel funding and raised a pre-seed round. Now the founders are raising again, as they build out the MVP and seek to hire a team.

The startup is also part of ANDHealth’s ACTIVATE Cohort for 2024 — an accelerator program for Victorian digital health companies poised for growth.

It’s a “super prestigious” program, Tia says. In fact, she says she’s benefiting just from being in the room.

“Everyone is incredible scientists, professors, clinicians. Just amazing founders. They’re all doing incredible things.”

The program offers access to the local medtech ecosystem — connections to mentors, industry experts and niche subject matter experts.

For Tia and Pete, who have been building for a few years, it has also allowed for reflection, bringing them back to the basics of their business, viewed through a medtech-specific lens.

“We needed a refresh. We needed to pause and get some guidance within the parameters of a class, to go back to our financial modelling,” Tia explains.

“What can we change? What can we build on?

“There could be a little tiny detail that we overlooked or didn’t know, that actually makes quite a big impact.”

A time and a place

If Tia is the right founder building the right tech at the right time, then she believes Victoria is the right place to make it happen.

Melbourne is home to biomedical communities, events like the Digital Health Festival, and world-class research institutes and universities — many of which have their own medtech commercialisation accelerators.

There are great medtech companies scaling here, Tia says. And through LaunchVic-funded programs like ANDHealth, the State Government is well and truly leaning in; nurturing this growing ecosystem.

“The culture in Melbourne is very collaborative and very open,” she says.

“It doesn’t feel too competitive. If you go to a networking event, everyone is open to conversation.

“It makes this a really cool ecosystem to work within.”