St. Louis Park VR company helps Gates Foundation spread awareness to eradicate polio worldwide

With the investment of billions of dollars over the past several decades, mass immunization efforts across the globe have made polio nearly nonexistent.

In Afghanistan and Pakistan, however, there are cases of wild polio, and variants of the viral disease are being discovered in several other countries, primarily in Africa. If not fully eradicated, within a decade, a resurgence of 200,000 new cases could happen annually, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).

To draw awareness to the dangers of polio and its threat as a public health issue, top leaders at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a nonprofit partner of the GPEI founded by billionaire Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, and his former wife and businesswoman, Melinda, sought new and fresh messaging platforms.

In previous years, the foundation would have funded trips for politicians and potential donors to witness firsthand the effects of polio in various parts of the globe. Strategies around effectiveness shifted, though, and finding a way to bring the frontline experience to potential donors and decision-makers was needed.

A Minnesota company’s technology would become the tool to execute that vision.

In early 2023, creative minds at REM5 Studios, a St. Louis Park-based immersive and virtual reality development and experiences company, began conversations with staff at the foundation, widely regarded as one of the world’s largest philanthropic organizations, to discuss such a product. With new technology, they discovered that they could virtually teleport people into an immersive experience and reignite support around eradicating polio.

Compared with television commercials, power point presentations and pamphlets, it would supercharge feelings of empathy and create action and change.

“You’ve seen the commercials,” said REM5 director Brian Skalak. “For 28 cents a day you can change a life. We didn’t want to do that.”

With grant funding from the foundation and permission and access from government officials in Zambia, in southern Africa, REM5 innovators spent days filming content to create “Polio’s Last Mile,” an immersive and augmented reality video that follows volunteers in Zambia administering vaccines to children.

The video can be seen two-dimensionally on a computer screen, but was designed for viewing inside a VR headset. During the full immersive segment, with each head turn, the viewer sees a different angle of volunteers and villagers.

The film ends with a message from Bill Gates explaining why and how people should contribute to the cause. With polio roughly 99% reduced worldwide, the last mile refers to health officials, governments and philanthropic organizations being near the finish line of completely eradicating the virus, said Amber Zeddies, a senior program officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, based in Seattle.

“People have forgotten about polio because it is gone in most places,” Zeddies said. “So how do we keep it top of mind and relevant enough so we can cross that final threshold and move on to other public health and development priorities?”

Zeddies, a St. Paul native, met REM5 chief executive Amir Berenjian at South by Southwest, the mega tech and film convention and music festival in Austin, Texas. While there, “[Berenjian] was kind of chit-chatting about the power of virtual reality and bringing people to places they can’t physically go,” she said.

REM5 leaped at the opportunity.

“To do this now with Bill Gates is a dream come true,” Berenjian said.

The video was shown to 1,500 people using VR headsets over a five-day period at a Rotary International conference in Singapore earlier this year, making it one of the largest VR activations in the world, Berenjian and Skalak said. So far, nearly 4,000 people have watched the film using VR headsets, they said

“We can see someone take off the headset and then want to make a difference,” Skalak said.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has ideas to make the experience available in other languages, like French and Mandarin, Zeddies said. The foundation has plans to also make the experience available to attendees at the World Health Summit in Berlin in October, she said.

“Polio’s Last Mile” is a relatively revolutionary method of storytelling for humanitarian efforts, Berenjian said. For years, engineers, software developers and enthusiasts talked about using virtual reality technology as a means of bridging the gap in human connection. REM5, which started in 2018, was founded on the idea of making virtual reality more available to the masses.

In the past year, though, the launch of the new Meta Quest 3 VR headset and the Apple Vision Pro allowed industry leaders to create value for VR technology at scale. REM5 has used the tech for other projects — a behind-the-scenes look at how cheese is made for a food production company, and a virtual game-day experience for the Minnesota United FC.

Similar to “Polio’s Last Mile,” REM5 is creating an immersive experience for the American Cancer Society to build awareness and donations for more Hope Lodges, a free place to stay for patients undergoing treatment.

Work like this “has always been the most rewarding,” Berenjian said.

Amir said his company isn’t replacing traditional storytelling platforms. Fully immersive and augmented reality “is just another extension,” he said.

“We’re using it to make the world a better place,” he said.