During the day we often have moments that we would like to fill with reading. However, we are too lazy to drag around a book. So we often end up aimlessly scrolling through social networks. On the contrary, one of the largest publishing houses in the Czech Republic, Albatros Media, has tons of literature content and was looking for a new way to bring it to the customers as well as monetize it. That’s why we created the StoryMe app together.
StoryMe offers high-quality stories that are dosed to you at certain times almost as if you followed the hero’s story on social media. Each part of the story is designed to fill in a few minutes at a time, fit into a longer story, but also to make sense on its own (so that the reader doesn’t have to spend time remembering what happened last).
StoryMe is not only focused on the readers. It is a space for established and (maybe even more so) new authors. It allows them to get their story out of a drawer, show it to readers and get valuable feedback in the form of likes and comments. On top of that they can also earn some extra money, because the readers can support the authors or buy their story directly.
The app has now been downloaded more than 35,000 times and over 180,000 micro-stories have been read. When the feature to publish your own story was offered to the public, more than 1,500 users expressed their desire to become a StoryMe author. The whole concept was built based on interviews with local book-lovers and it appears that the app is the only one of its kind in the world.
About Albatros Media
Albatros Media is the largest publishing house in the Czech Republic. With tradition going back to 1949, it now publishes over 2,000 titles a year. VR is a technology with huge potential to change fields. VR Medical and the Jufa investment group together with us therefore decided to look for ways to use virtual reality in healthcare for the benefit of patients, medical staff and/or medical device manufacturers. And so far it turns out that we are on the right track.
Future is now
In just 10 months, we have managed to create a product that disruptive rehabilitation care in an agile way with a transformational impact on patients, therapists and medical facilities. We also have obtained a key part of the Medical Device Class I Certification, while running feedback studies in several hospitals and negotiating with major foreign players at an advanced level. Last but not least, at the end of 2021, our project won at the 4DigitalHealth accelerator demo day.
Simultaneously with the stream focused on the use of VR in rehabilitation, we launched another business model that addresses the pre-sales and after-sales care of medical facilities using VR technology. The aim of the project is to provide valuable experience of the product without the need for transportation of heavy and expensive medical equipment to the clients and the ability to train them remotely as a part of after-sales care. Our innovative and cost-effective solution have helped firms meet the needs of clients and provide excellent customer service.
Moreover, we are developing virtual reality medical training for hospital care teams. Since the greatest expense of hospitals is the infection that patients spread and which prolong their hospital stays, we decided to design a training program for medical staff to understand how to properly follow hygiene rules and effectively protect themselves and patients from infection. We have established cooperation with Meditorial, the largest provider of courses for doctors (www.prolekare.cz), to create content of the training and prepare its first pilots together.
And what’s next?
After two years, we handed the project over to an internal team. VR rehabilitation already has paying customers, sales to other hospitals are underway and scaling to other countries is in the pipeline. We keep our fingers crossed for them to get this great product in every rehabilitation department as soon as possible.
About VR Medical
VR Medical is a startup with long-term technological and strong financial backgrounds developing products that enable faster healing, reduce staff overload and minimise risk.