AppliedVR’s Three E’s Framework: Balancing Innovation with Usability in Healthcare Tech
When healthcare startups prioritize technical innovation over usability, they often create solutions that fail in the real world. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, AppliedVR founder Matthew Stoudt revealed their “Three E’s Framework” for building technology that actually works for patients.
The Three E’s Philosophy
“I don’t care how efficacious it is, I don’t care how engaging it is, if it is complicated, if it is hard to use, if there’s friction in the equation, the patient’s never going to use it,” Matthew emphasizes. “It’s going to sit in a corner and gather dust.”
This insight led to their Three E’s framework:
- Ease of use
- Engagement
- Efficacy
What’s notable is the order – ease of use comes first, before even efficacy. This might seem counterintuitive in healthcare, but it reflects a deep understanding of how products succeed in the real world.
Learning Through Failure
One of their most instructive failures came from an attempt to incorporate biometric feedback. “We actually started with this idea of being able to use a pulse oximeter attached to your finger, connected to Bluetooth, that would use your own heart rate variability to drive the experience,” Matthew recalls. “In a laboratory, that is awesome… but you send that into a home to a 55-year-old male, female, whatever, and they got to put a pulse – what? On their finger? I don’t have blue teeth. What are you talking about? Right? It’s going to fail.”
This experience shaped their approach to product development. Instead of starting with what’s technically possible, they start with what’s practically usable.
Designing for Real World Use
Their eight-week therapy program reflects this philosophy. As Matthew explains, “We teach essential skills over the course of these eight weeks. Each week is a different theme that we have, and we do a lot of reinforcement of the previous week’s themes.”
The goal isn’t to keep patients in VR forever. “We don’t want them living their life in the goggles and the headset, as we say, but we want to give them these skills that they can go and do something, live on their own and be able to control their central nervous system.”
Simplifying Complex Features
A powerful example of their approach is their breathing visualization feature. Rather than using complex biometrics, they created an intuitive visual experience. “What we do is we put you in this scene with bit of a desert scene of this dilapidated tree in front of you that looks like it’s essentially dead. And then as you start breathing at the right pace… it actually starts to breathe life into that world around you,” Matthew describes.
The impact is profound yet simple. “You’ll hear some of the patients talk about, when I was in the garden doing something, I had a pain flare, and I would remember that tree that I brought life to, and I would start to breathe, and I could visualize it in the moment.”
Balancing Innovation and Accessibility
Working with Beth Darnall, “probably the top pain psychologist in the world out of Stanford,” they developed treatments that were both scientifically sound and practically usable. The program requires only “about, on average, six minutes a day” – a duration chosen for both therapeutic effectiveness and real-world adherence.
Looking to the Future
While Matthew envisions VR becoming “a healthcare hub in the home,” he’s realistic about the timeline, noting this is “probably more in the eight to ten year time frame.” This long-term vision is balanced against the immediate need to create solutions that work today.
For founders building healthcare technology, the Three E’s Framework offers a crucial lesson: the most innovative solution isn’t always the most effective one. Sometimes the key to breakthrough impact is finding ways to make powerful technology simple enough for everyone to use.