About | oVRcome

About oVRcome

Hi! We’re oVRcome. A New Zealand based start-up from Christchurch. We use innovative technologies to improve mental wellbeing. We unite clinical expertise and cutting-edge virtual reality home technology to help people overcome their fears and anxieties.

Why oVRcome?

Our Commitment

We are committed to reducing the global treatment gap through highly effective, accessible, and affordable digital products.

Our Values

We want to make it easy for people to overcome phobias and anxieties. With oVRcome, anyone who needs help can get it with just a tap on their phone.

Our Mission

Whether you have an ongoing anxiety condition or you're going through a rough patch, our mission is to make sure that things like time, money, and worry won't stop you from getting the help you need to enjoy life.

Our goal

Research has shown that 80% of people with an anxiety disorder, such as phobia or social anxiety, receive no treatment at all. This is known as the Treatment Gap.
The main barriers are cost, location, stigma and a lack of trained psychologists.

Our goal with oVRcome is to make treatment for these anxiety disorders easy and accessible to everyone who needs it, no matter where they are in the world.

Advisory Board

Our board of clinical psychologists, health and technology experts provide the experience and ability to develop oVRcome.

Kathryn Harvey

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST

Kathryn is an experienced Clinical Psychologist with over thirteen years experience in the field. She has worked with children, adolescents, and adults in diverse settings including specialised services for youth, mental health rehabilitation, adult community mental health, inpatient mental health units, and in private practice where she has been since 2013.

Dr. Rachel Findlay

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST AND NEUROPSYCHOLGIST

Rachel is a registered Clinical Psychologist and Neuropsychologist, and a member of the New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists (NZCCP). She has experience across a diverse range of settings involving clients across the lifespan, including mental health services for older adults, children, and youth, trauma work with frontline staff, offending assessment and rehabilitation, and neuropsychological assessment within paediatric settings and privately (involving traumatic brain injury across the lifespan). Her doctoral thesis was related to activity scheduling within CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) for depression. Her treatment approach includes components from CBT as well as other modalities, including ACT, EMDR, and Solution-Focused Therapy.

Catherine Gallagher

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST

Catherine is a clinical psychologist who has worked over the last 20 years in both the public and private sectors with a particular focus on children and young people. She is currently the Clinical Practice Manager at START (a community based agency that supports children, youth and adults who have experienced sexual harm) alongside a private practice where she offers individual and family therapy with people of all ages, community education, and supervision.

Prof. Mark Billinghurst Ph.D.

TECHNICAL ADVISOR

Mark is Professor at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia, and at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, directing the Empathic Computing Laboratory in both places. He earned a PhD in 2002 from the University of Washington and researches how virtual and real worlds can be merged, publishing over 600 papers on Augmented Reality, remote collaboration, Empathic Computing, and related topics. In 2013 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in recognition of his research and commercialisation efforts in Augmented Reality.

Mark Hargreaves

IP AND STRATEGY ADVISOR

Mark spent 27 years working has a commercial lawyer in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. He worked in the IP and technology area, helping clients with their IP strategy and working with them to negotiate and execute a range of agreements to commercialise their technology. He spent the last 14 years at AJ Park where he lead the firm's commercial and IP strategy teams. During this time, Mark worked with a huge range of businesses from start-ups and SMEs to large corporate exporters. After finishing at AJ Park in April 2022, Mark is now working with a range of growth stage companies in New Zealand that are looking to develop their products and markets.

Albert “Skip” Rizzo Ph.D.

SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR

Skip is a clinical psychologist and Director of Medical VR at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. He is also a Research Professor with the USC Dept. of Psychiatry and School of Gerontology. Over the last 25 years, Skip has conducted research on the design, development and evaluationof Virtual Reality systems targeting the areas of clinical assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation across the domains of psychological, cognitive and motor functioning in both healthy and clinical populations.

Samir Akre

RESEARCHER

Samir is a researcher leveraging data from consumer wearable devices to enhance our understanding of mental health conditions. He brings experience working across sectors, including industry, academia, lived experience communities, and funding agencies, to advance the field of digital sensing in mental health. Samir earned his Ph.D. in Medical Informatics at UCLA, where he focused on analyzing data from smartphones and smartwatches to detect symptoms of depression. His multidisciplinary background spans biomedical engineering, software development, machine learning, and entrepreneurship.

Dr. T Dawson Woodrum Ph.D.

ADVISOR

Dawson is a U.S. registered Clinical Psychologist that has also spent over 15 years working in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device industries focused on electronic data integrity, regulatory strategy, privacy. and information security.

Benjamin Lok

RESEARCHER

Benjamin Lok is a Professor in the Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering Department at the University of Florida and entrepreneur, having previously co-founded Shadow Health (now a part of Elsevier). Professor Lok's research focuses on using virtual humans and mixed reality to train communication skills within the areas of virtual environments, human-computer interaction, and computer graphics. Professor Lok received a Ph. D. in 2002 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Lok is an inaugural inductee of the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy, the 2019 UF Innovator of the Year Award, and received an NSF Career Award (2007-2012).

The oVRcome Team

Adam Hutchinson

FOUNDER

Adam is an innovative technology serial entrepreneur having founded award winning location based advertising platform GeoZone in 2013 (winner of the NZ Hi-Tech Awards 2015, NZ Innovation Award 2017) and Australasia's most popular multi-lingual camping app CamperMate in 2011 which were both acquired by the worlds largest campervan rental company Tourism Holdings in 2015. In 2011 Adam also founded the international award winning 'New Zealand Fishing Rules' smartphone app which is under contract to the New Zealand government. Adam is passionate about applying different technologies to improve accessibility to information and care.

Kasia Sadowska

CLIENT SUCCESS MANAGER

Kasia is an experienced community and support manager having supported a number of app based digital communities as well as helping customers adopt new technology into their business operations. Kasia has also been involved in a number of award winning technology projects across New Zealand and Australia.

Dr Jin Teo

HEAD OF CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

Jin has designed and developed programs, courses, and content for MedTech, FemTech, EduTech, and FinTech startups. She has extensive experience with creating content for customer conversion for allied health businesses. Her lens is equal parts academic and scientific accuracy, and consumer engagement and marketability. As an educator, she has worked with different abilities including autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, dyslexia, learning disabilities, and giftedness. Jin's research focuses on developing culturally relevant and creatively engaging behavioural interventions for neurodiverse individuals.

Alvin Tan

PRODUCT MANAGER

Alvin is an experienced Product Manager who is known for transforming ideas and concepts into impactful products. Dedicated to continuous improvement and user centric design, he thrives when collaborating with skilled cross functional teams to design and deliver product features that really hit the mark. Outside of software, Alvin enjoys a variety of sports including Judo, football and sailing.

Michael Adams

SENIOR DEVELOPER

Michael is an experienced backend developer, who enjoys solving complicated problems in simple, elegant ways, with a particular focus on debugging difficult bugs. Outside of work, he is a passionate gardener and DIYer.

Thor Russell

DATA SCIENTIST

Thor is a data scientist with extensive experience in startups, early-stage technology development, and commercialization of IP. He has been a founder, co-founder, board member, and has led IP development and early-stage development work. He is enthusiastic about algorithm design and implementation, combining novel ideas in ways that benefit society at large. He also enjoys the New Zealand outdoor experience with his family.

Isaac Freeman

REGULATORY/COMPLIANCE

Isaac has been a full-stack web developer since 2008, with particular interests in integrating development and design,and helping teams grow into stable development processes.He lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, and enjoys drinking all varieties of tea.

Daniel Collins

SENIOR FRONT END

Daniel is an experienced game and Virtual Reality app developer based in Christchurch.He has worked with a number of global brands bringing international games and apps to life and taught asset production as a Design Fellow in the School of Product Design at Canterbury University.

Shazza Hong

DATA ANALYST

Shazza is a data analyst passionate about unlocking insights from data, data modeling and data visualisation. She was also an assistant project manager and a software tester with experience in working across multiple industries. She is also enthusiastic about system design to improve workflow and productivity. She enjoys cooking, traveling, and outdoor activities like picnicking and tennis.

Steve Chudley

SENIOR DEVELOPER

Steve is a developer focused on system design and usability. With experience across the full stack in both mobile and web applications, he excels at breaking down complex problems into workable solutions. In his spare time you can find him growing strawberries or tinkering on various DIY projects.

Matt Mischewski

INTERMEDIATE FRONT END

Matt is a talented Virtual Reality software engineer. Within the Software Engineering and Computer Science field, his key technology interests involve both web and mobile application development, working on both frontend and backend aspects of development

Roman Naumov

DATA SCIENTIST

Roman is a highly motivated IT professional with experience as a Python/SQL/C++ software developer in various industries, holding an MSc in Applied Data Science with distinction from the University of Canterbury. He is focused on solving complex, cutting-edge real-world problems using exciting modern technologies in AI, computer vision and natural language processing. In his spare time, Roman enjoys swimming, traveling, hiking and spending time with his large family.

Julie Collard

UX/GRAPHICS

Julie has extensive experience in the development of award winning user experiences. She has designed the experience behind mobile applications such as the NZ Fishing Rules app, CamperMate and the GeoZone apps and has extensive experience in the UX behind many health and wellbeing applications.

Adam Hodgson

HEAD OF POST-PRODUCTION

Adam Hodgson is a talented and enthusiastic photographer, videographer and editor based in Christchurch who specialises in filming commercial 360 videos designed for Virtual Reality experiences. Adam is also pursuing a design degree at the ARA Institute of Canterbury.