Empowering Psychotherapy with VR Exposure Therapy: A Case Study on Lab E

Client

Lab E GmbH is a German SME at the intersection of mental health and digital technology. Through its virtuallythere platform, the company delivers digital tools for psychotherapists' standard therapies, focusing on supporting various mental health indications through VR exposure therapy. Lab E's growing library of 360-degree video content and therapist-focused applications brings controlled, customizable virtual experiences into psychotherapeutic clinics, practices, and patients' homes. With a strong foundation in evidence-based care and innovation, Lab E is shaping the future of VR-supported digital therapy.

Business Challenge

Lab E's original software solution failed to support the company's expansion goals. The existing platform was outdated, difficult to scale, and limited in functionality. Therapists could not guide sessions in real time, and the user experience on disconnected VR headsets was clunky and unreliable. Therapists struggled to monitor and control what patients saw in the headset. To meet growing demand and introduce more personalized treatment flows, Lab E needed a modern solution that would be scalable, secure, and clinically practical.

Solution

DataArt partnered with Lab E to build a custom VR therapy solution from the ground up. The system supports two core modes:

• In-office sessions: Therapists use a secure web application to guide the session while the patient wears a VR headset. The video playback is fully synchronized, allowing therapists to pause, restart, loop specific segments, and see precisely what the patient is experiencing in real time.
• At-home sessions: Therapists assign videos for download onto the patient's device. Once activated, the headset stores encrypted content for offline use over a predefined licensing period.

To enable this, DataArt built:

• A cross-device VR app in Unity, using OpenXR for device abstraction, ensuring the same experience across Pico and Meta Quest headsets.
• A secure custom video player optimized for high-resolution playback, with advanced caching, offline functionality, and content encryption.
• A therapist portal, such as a React web application, supports session control, screenshot capture, timestamped notes, and video assignment.
• A cloud-native, serverless backend with real-time data sync via WebSockets, providing linear cost scalability and operational resilience.

Technology Highlights

• Custom Video Player: Developed to avoid licensing costs and enable advanced controls, multi-threaded rendering, and lightweight playback of 360° HD videos.
• Encryption & Security: OAuth 2.0 device authorization and full encryption of media files ensure protected access and patient data privacy.
• Infrastructure: The serverless backend scales automatically with demand. NoSQL storage and adaptive streaming help manage bandwidth and costs.

Impact

The platform launched in April 2025. Feedback from early adopters among therapists has mainly been positive, highlighting the system's ease of use, session flexibility, and improved patient interaction, especially allowing patients to run sessions in their home environment. Lab E now operates on a license-based model, providing access to its VR video content library, the therapist portal, and pre-installed VR devices to clinics and individual therapists. The system has laid the groundwork for a scalable B2C expansion.

DataArt's professional approach to software development was key to providing a complex software-based business application – VR device app, therapist portal, and admin console – that addresses not only secure cloud architecture and fast back-end data processing, but also the user experience that meets and partially exceeds our clients' expectations. We could launch the product on the planned date and are now preparing for the next system upgrade, i.e., integrating an app for patients

Dr. Patrik Scholler

COO and Head of Product Management at Lab E.

What's Next

Plans include:

• Enabling patients to receive amended therapy schedules remotely and report on their progress via a dedicated patient app.
• Introducing AI-guided therapy sessions for low-risk scenarios.
• Expanding into and beyond the EU markets.

Team Reflection

The development team highlighted the technical complexity and creative challenge of designing a native VR experience with precise playback, secure offline use, and real-time therapist control. Their efforts have delivered a robust, flexible platform supporting Lab E's vision for accessible, scalable digital therapy support.