IPC4MH – Immersive Prevention Centers for Mental Health

Why

Long waiting times and fragmented access make mental-health care hard to reach. Teenagers with neurodevelopmental disorders and older adults at risk of depression often fall through the cracks. Immersive prevention centres (IPCs) bring them together in shared virtual spaces, supervised by professionals, and work alongside existing care pathways rather than replacing them.

Objectives

• Evidence-based framework

  A framework for immersive prevention, grounded in clinical evidence.

• Integrated XR platform

  One platform for prevention activities and for monitoring how participants are doing.

• Responsible AI

  Interpretable models for the affective and behavioural data collected in sessions.

• Multi-site pilots

  Pilots with young people and with seniors in Switzerland, France and Poland.

• Lasting impact

  Dissemination, business models and sustainability beyond the project.

How the project works

The work is organised in seven work packages:

• Management, ethics, and a data plan that follows the FAIR principles and the GDPR.
• Co-creation with patients and professionals: observation, workshops, and paper and VR prototypes.
• Core technology: the platform architecture, and an interface through which partners plug in their activities.
• Implementation of three centres, two for young people and one for seniors, built in successive iterations.
• Evaluation with young people and with seniors, through interviews, questionnaires and behaviour logs from the headsets.
• Dissemination and business models.

Where it stands

A first alpha version of the shared virtual space runs on Meta and PICO headsets. Participants meet in a central hall with their own avatars. Professionals can open private consultation and group-talk rooms, accept, mute or remove participants, and launch activities from the partners.

Publications

1. Immersive Prevention Centers for Mental Health: Secondary and Tertiary Prevention in the Metaverse
   A. Widmer, S. Bulteau, R. Malo, P. Matusz, N. Richert, J.-P. Rivière, P. Tomalski, Y. Prié
   II International Congress: Metaverse for the Good – II EMRN Conference, 2025
2. Use of Immersive Data by Medical Practitioners for Mental Health Prevention
   N. Richert, A. Widmer, Y. Prié
   II International Congress: Metaverse for the Good – II EMRN Conference, 2025