About
About Heka VR
Heka VR was built to bring avatar therapy out of the research setting and into psychiatric care, at scale. We are the commercialisation of a public-private clinical partnership that began in 2019 — and we exist because too many patients with severe mental illness are still told there is nothing more that standard treatment can offer them.
Origin
A public-private partnership, by design
Heka VR did not begin as a startup looking for a problem. It began as a Grand Solutions project funded by Innovation Fund Denmark, bringing together Khora Virtual Reality, the VIRTU Research Group at Copenhagen University, and three Danish healthcare regions — Region Hovedstaden, Region Nordjylland, and Region Syddanmark — to investigate whether immersive virtual reality could improve outcomes in the treatment of severe mental illness.
The project was clinically rigorous from the outset, designed not to demonstrate that VR was interesting but to test whether it could meaningfully change patient outcomes. Out of that work came the clinical evidence base, the methodology, and the platform that Heka VR exists to bring to psychiatric services worldwide.
Today
From research project to clinical platform
Since 2019, more than 500 patients have received avatar therapy using our platform, across psychiatric hospitals, research institutions and clinical trials in Europe, North America and Australia. The evidence base has grown into multiple peer-reviewed publications, ongoing randomised controlled trials, and active research partnerships across nine countries.
Heka VR today is the clinical and commercial partner that enables psychiatric services and research groups to access this work. We are CE marked under EU Medical Device Regulation. We operate from Copenhagen, with a hired management team led by CEO Sara Leander-Pehrson and CSO Kasper Eskelund, and a growing clinical advisory board.
Mission
Why we exist
Severe mental illness affects millions of people for whom standard treatment is not enough. They are told their condition is treatment-resistant, that the options have been exhausted, that this is as good as it gets.
We don't accept that. Treatment resistance should not be a term anyone has to hear about themselves or someone they love. Heka VR exists to make a new generation of psychiatric treatment clinically accessible — built on rigorous evidence, delivered through existing clinical services, and designed to give patients and their clinicians a genuinely new option.
Principles
How we work
Research-led
We work closely with the global research community advancing avatar therapy, and our platform is shaped by clinical research rather than commercial expediency.
Existing clinical teams
Avatar therapy is delivered by certified clinicians employed by the hospitals and clinics we partner with — not by Heka VR.
Medical device standards
Heka VR is CE marked as a Class I medical device under EU MDR.
Independent science
Research using our platform is published in peer-reviewed journals at the discretion of the research teams, including null and negative findings.