Photo credit: Dream Logic

Immerse UK teamed up with Barclays Eagle Labs for a free webinar on 25 November to explore how immersive technologies can play a role in palliative care and addressing grief.

About this webinar

How can technology help us live more fully and support us in our final moments? What are the ethical implications of bringing emerging technologies into hospices, or helping us reunite with loved ones passed? Covid-19 has forced us to confront challenging subjects around mortality, and transformed how we grieve and attend funerals into the digital sphere. This event recording explores the role immersive technologies can play in palliative care, and new ways we can create a more grief literate society.

Speakers include:

  • Dr Sheila Popert | Medical Director of Prospect Hospice in Swindon
  • Dr John Troyer | Director of the Centre for Death and Society  | University of Bath
  • Kelly Sinclair Vicars | Northern California-based Artist & Creative Producer
  • Sarah Ticho | Healthcare Lead | Immerse UK (moderator)

Useful Resources

This recording explores sensitive topics around grief and end of life. We recommend visiting our Grief, End of Life + XR Resources page, designed to support people looking for support, in addition to further information for those with a personal or professional interest in the subject matter. Access our resources page

Speaker biographies

Dr Sheila Popert
Dr Sheila Popert is the Medical Director of Prospect Hospice in Swindon. She has extensive palliative medicine experience and her involvement with Virtual Reality stemmed from her work looking at ways to provide non-pharmacological pain management. She worked with Holosphere to develop a VR mindfulness app for the relief of pain; The Forest of Serenity, narrated by Sir David Attenborough. As well as using VR to help patients reduce their reliance on opioids she uses it for reminiscence therapy and to enable patients to enjoy experiences that their shrinking worlds no longer permit. Sometimes she uses it just to put a smile on their faces.
Website: Visit Prospect Hospice’s website for more information & to support their work

 

 

Dr John Troyer
Dr John Troyer is the Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath (www.bath.ac.uk). He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website, the Future Cemetery Project and a frequent commentator for the BBC. His forthcoming book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will be published by the MIT Press in 2020. He grew up in the American Funeral industry.

 

Kelly Sinclair Vicars
Kelly Sinclair Vicars is a northern California-based artist and creative producer whose abstract art, immersive installations and audio projects open portals into colourful realms of inner vision and outer landscape. Her collaborative projects have been shared at Burning Man, SFMOMA, California Academy of Sciences, Future Fires Festival, Reimagine: End of Life, Wild & Scenic Film Festival, and in Bay Area art and literary zines. She co-founded Dream Logic, an experiential art production company; and is the co-creator of Audio Acid Trips, a home for audio-guided meditations that re-enchant your known reality. She is a founding board member of the Immersive Arts Alliance in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Instagram:  @crytpo__leuka

 

Sarah Ticho
Sarah has spent her career working across the interdisciplinary arts, academia, healthcare and immersive technology as a producer, curator and researcher. She is the founder of Hatsumi, a research and design studio that works at the intersection of arts, health and immersive technology to develop experiences that challenge how we think and feel about the world and imagine the future of health and wellbeing. Sarah is the producer behind Explore Deep, a meditative breath controlled virtual reality experience controlled by breathing, and Healthcare Lead at Immerse UK, supporting researchers, artists, startups and healthcare organisations to connect, collaborate and collectively create a future for virtual reality in healthcare. In her spare time, she is training to become a death doula, an emotional support to people going through the end of life process.

In partnership with Barclays Eagle Labs

Barclays Eagle Labs logo
Barclays Eagle Labs began from a simple idea of re-purposing under-used Barclays’s space, our network of Eagle Labs has expanded quickly since our launch in 2015. Our mission is to fuel the UK’s entrepreneurial community by accelerating high-growth businesses through collaborative innovation and provide access to emerging technologies. @eagle_labs_hlth

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