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Patients receiving remedy at Cedars-Sinai for continual ache, nervousness, and despair are actually participating with a brand new sort of help — an AI therapist delivered via digital actuality that guides them in dialog, stress administration, and respiratory workouts.
Meet Xaia, your AI therapist
The experimental app referred to as Xaia (pronounced ZAI-uh brief for eXtended-reality Artificially Intelligent Ally) is at present accessible on the Apple Vision Pro headset. Developed by Cedars-Sinai physicians and AI consultants, the applying simulates structured therapeutic dialogue and represents each the hospital’s curiosity in next-generation instruments and a broader business shift towards AI-integrated care.
“Apple Vision Pro offers a gateway into Xaia’s world of immersive, interactive behavioral health support — making strides that I can only describe as a quantum leap beyond previous technologies,” mentioned Dr. Brennan Spiegel, director of Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai and the app’s co-founder, in a press release.
AI-driven empathy, medical intent
By leveraging digital actuality, Xaia transports customers to tranquil locations corresponding to sunlit shores or forest streams the place the app initiates dialog primarily based on psychological greatest practices and real-world remedy. It attracts from lots of of medical transcripts to generate responses through generative AI that really feel emotionally attuned. The Los Angeles Times reported that, in a single case, Xaia responded to a affected person’s most cancers analysis with, “That must be very hard for you,” and adopted by questions on emotional wellbeing and coping mechanisms.
Xaia just isn’t positioned as a alternative for licensed therapists however as a supplemental software for moments when conventional care is inaccessible.
“Even if somebody needs to be seen once a week, they may only get seen once a month,” mentioned Dr. Omer Liran, Cedars-Sinai psychiatrist and Xaia co-founder, informed the LA Times reporter.
To cut back threat and shield customers, the app’s builders have applied plenty of safeguards, famous the LA Times. For occasion, when Xaia generates a response, a second element checks it for medical appropriateness earlier than delivering it to the person.
Hospital-led innovation in digital well being
Xaia is obtainable to shoppers for $19.99 per 30 days via Apple Vision Pro. Researchers can entry free variations suitable with Meta’s VR platform, whereas clinicians can license internet and cell codecs at tiered pricing ranges.
Xaia’s public launch is managed by VRx Health, co-founded by Spiegel and Liran, which holds unique licensing from Cedars-Sinai. Its improvement has been supported by a current research printed in Nature Digital Medicine, which discovered the applying may present therapeutic advantages in measurable methods.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Cedars-Sinai distinguishes its method by embedding moral guardrails and medical oversight into the chatbot’s design — setting it aside from much less regulated AI remedy instruments at present accessible to clients. With $3.9 billion invested in digital well being in 2024, together with $1.four billion for psychological well being options, Xaia could possibly be a blueprint for accountable hospital-led innovation.
“We’re not just opening it up to the public,” Liran mentioned to the LA Times. “We’re trying to be very careful.”
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