VR Therapy Supports Chronic Pain Relief in Devon
Torbay Hospital in Devon has been showcasing an immersive virtual reality (VR) approach designed to complement conventional care for people living with long-term chronic pain. Clinicians at the Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust have been running an eight-week VR-supported rehabilitation course that encourages patients to move, focus, and self-manage symptoms in ways that reduce reliance on medication while building confidence in physical activity.
The therapy uses a system developed by Cureo. Participants wear a VR headset and are guided through visually engaging environments that redirect attention away from pain signals and towards controlled movement. Staff involved in the programme report that by engaging patients in tasks that feel exploratory rather than clinical, individuals often move with less guardedness and gradually extend their range of motion. The immersive setting is intended to lower threat perception within the central nervous system, which, in persistent pain states, can remain in a state of heightened alertness long after an original injury or trigger has resolved.
According to the pain rehabilitation team, patients with longstanding pain frequently present with sensitised neurophysiology in which normal movement is interpreted as threatening, prompting protective tension and avoidance. The service lead, physiotherapist Phillipa Newton-Cross, has explained that introducing calming, rhythmical movement strategies in a low-threat virtual setting can reduce the fight-or-flight response that keeps the system on constant alert. Once patients learn to regulate that response, they are better able to engage in standard physiotherapy exercises and broader functional rehabilitation. In this way, VR is not positioned as a replacement for conventional care but as a gateway that helps patients tolerate and benefit from it.
The development of a structured clinical rehabilitation pathway using VR was supported by a £29,000 award from the Trust’s League of Friends. Funding has enabled the service to embed the technology within multidisciplinary pain management programmes, provide staff training, and evaluate patient outcomes over repeated cohorts. The eight-week structure typically involves regular supervised sessions in which patients practise movements within virtual scenarios, receive coaching on pacing and body awareness, and track changes in function and medication use.
Individual experiences within the programme illustrate the range of potential gains. One participant, David Malpas, who lives with progressive myopathy and significant restriction in neck movement, completed the course and subsequently found compensatory movement strategies that allowed him to redirect movement through his trunk and shoulders rather than depending on limited cervical rotation. By learning alternative muscle activation patterns identified during VR sessions, he became able to orient his body left and right more comfortably in daily activities.
Family perspectives have also underscored observed improvements. Malpas’s wife, Claire, initially doubted that a headset-based intervention would produce meaningful change after many years of difficulty. Over the eight-week period, she reported unexpectedly marked progress in the ease with which he moved, attributing the shift to the combined input of the clinical team and the motivating, feedback-rich VR environment.
Another participant, Stuart Spray, had lived with chronic pain for more than two decades and had escalated over time to the maximum prescribed dose of codeine. After engaging with the VR sessions, he reported that the immersive distraction and renewed focus on his own movement choices helped him reframe pain management. With clinical supervision, he tapered and ultimately stopped codeine, maintaining improved function and describing broader gains in general health and alertness following discontinuation of the long-term opioid use.
Since the introduction of the system, 50 patients across South Devon have taken part in the VR-supported programme. Clinicians are monitoring patterns in medication change, functional mobility, and patient-reported outcomes to understand which groups may benefit most and how VR might be scaled within community pain services. Early qualitative feedback suggests that the novelty and engagement of the immersive experience can overcome initial scepticism, particularly when integrated into an interdisciplinary plan that includes physiotherapy, education, and self-management strategies.
The Cureo software used at Torbay has been available in other countries since 2017, but the Torbay pain service is understood to be the first to adapt and deliver this specific platform within an NHS clinical rehabilitation pathway in the United Kingdom. Further evaluation will help determine cost-effectiveness, durability of benefits, and potential inclusion in wider NHS pain management frameworks. For now, the Devon team views immersive VR as a promising adjunct that can help people with persistent pain reconnect with movement, reduce medication load where appropriate, and regain elements of daily function that long-term pain so often erodes.
