Aspichi study shows mixed reality helps Ukrainians cope with wartime strain

Aspichi, a mixed reality company developing immersive tools for recovery and resilience, said that a six-month study shows it can help people under wartime strain.

The study of Aspichi’s Luminify immersive support program the tech helps veterans and others with mental health.

The Kyiv company studied the use across 47 organizaitons in Ukraine, including hospitals, veteran centers and mobile teams. It showed how immersive mixed reality can be embedded into real care systems to support mental resilience on a large scale. It said it helped individuals recover, stabilize and remain functional under sustained pressure.

A six-month study of Aspichi’s Luminify across 47 organizations in Ukraine, including hospitals, veteran centers, and mobile teams, shows how immersive mixed reality can be embedded into real care systems to support mental resilience at scale, helping individuals recover, stabilize, and remain functional under sustained pressure.

The company deployed Luminify and found in its study found that 1,114 patients completed 8,884 sessions using 162 headsets across 47 organizations, suggesting that immersive mixed-reality tools may help overstretched care systems expand access to recovery support, improve engagement, and integrate new forms of emotional regulation and rehabilitation support into daily practice.

Luminify is a mixed-reality-based psychological support program that delivers guided scenarios based on evidence-based approaches, including cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, acceptance and commitment therapy, grounding, breathing, attentional shifting, and trauma-informed design principles. Each session is structured, time-bound, and user-controlled, allowing individuals to engage safely while clinicians maintain oversight.

The findings come as health and recovery systems worldwide face growing pressure to support resilience in conflict-affected, displaced, and resource-constrained settings. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that nearly all people affected by emergencies experience psychological distress, while one in five people exposed to war or conflict in the previous decade develops more serious conditions requiring support.

At the same time, 2.4 billion people globally live with conditions that may benefit from rehabilitation. Against this backdrop, providers are looking for scalable tools that can extend – not replace – professional support while preserving structure, oversight, and patient safety.

“Health and recovery systems need new ways to deliver structured support without placing even more pressure on already overstretched professionals,” said Viktor Samoilenko, CEO of Aspichi, in a statement. “This study shows that immersive tools can play a serious practical role: helping care teams make support more accessible, repeatable, and easier for people to engage with.”

The study suggests immersive tools can do more than add another piece of technology to an already strained system. In conflict-affected environments, they may help reduce stigma, support emotional regulation, and improve access for people who are hesitant to engage through traditional formats. At the same time, the research makes clear that scale does not come from device distribution alone; it depends on infrastructure, clinician confidence, supervision, and structured integration into real care pathways.

Luminify was most often used as a stabilization tool within broader care processes, not as a replacement for psychotherapy. Clinicians used it to help patients regulate emotions, reduce stress responses, improve focus, and become more ready to engage in further support. In veteran centers and psychosocial programs, practitioners also described it as a lower-barrier entry point into care, particularly for individuals hesitant to engage through traditional talk-based formats.

“One of the most important effects we saw was that the headset helped people take the first step into support,” said a participating practical psychologist at a Ukrainian resilience center, in a statement. “Clients would hear about it from others and come in saying, ‘I came for the glasses.’ From there, the consultation could begin. In that sense, the tool helped reduce stigma and opened the door to care.”

The study also highlights what is required for responsible scaling. Adoption varied across organizations due to differences in infrastructure, clinician confidence, leadership support, and workflow integration. Sustainable implementation requires reliable infrastructure, clinician training, supervision, care protocols, and standardized outcome tracking, reinforcing that scale depends on system integration rather than standalone deployment.

Beyond the study, Luminify has reached more than one million users across more than six million sessions, with deployment expanding from five clinics in 2023 to 131 clinics in Ukraine in 2025, according to company data.

Luminify has been developed in close partnership with the Ukrainian armed forces, shaping the technology based on direct feedback from practitioners in the field. The new implementation study builds on Aspichi’s earlier research involving Ukrainian veterans with stress-related symptoms, where immersive, tech-assisted therapy was shown to reduce anxiety and depression, alongside reported improvements in mood, concentration, and stress resilience.

Aspichi was also recently selected for the PwC Scale Program: Medical Resilience for Civil and Military Use, joining a cohort of 20 companies chosen from innovators across Europe and NATO member states. Through the eight-week program with PwC Belgium, Aspichi will explore how Luminify can scale across healthcare, rehabilitation, and defense-related environments, with the company set to pitch at the program’s Innovation Day on June 24.

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