i-EMDR

Story Behind the Invention

My name is John Thorn. I am a licensed clinical/consulting psychologist. I have practiced in the Tetons of Wyoming as Creative Solutions Consulting, LLC for over forty years.

In the mid-nineties, I had the opportunity of designing and conducting a national market research project determining the feasibility of (and market for) a platform to provide psychotherapy services over the internet. The research provided huge support for the concept. My clients were ecstatic for the business potential for their idea. For a while in the early 80s, I was the only psychologist in an area the size of Connecticut, and I came away from the research excited by what e-therapy could mean to mental health in rural America. Were it not for the dot com crash of 2000, we would have seen then what we what we see now, in our pandemic-plagued and war-torn world; coaching, counseling and psychotherapy is readily available online.

Also in the mid-nineties, I went to Francine Shapiro and her EMDR Institute for training in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR); at the time considered an experimental form of treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Having provided psychotherapy for dozens of Vietnam veterans in the eighties, I was deeply interested in learning about how to improve my efficiency in returning PTSD victims to their pre-trauma lives. I was so impressed by the training and the EMDR procedure that I became an early adopter and have, over the years since, successfully treated scores of patients suffering PTSD.

EMDR as a procedure survived the rigors of intensive clinical research. No longer experimental, EMDR is considered by thousands of therapists to be the treatment of choice for PTSD today.

In early 2000s, I purchased a device designed to relieve the physical demands on the therapist providing the visual target by moving their fingers back and forth in front of the face of a patient. I still find the device very helpful, if a bit clumsy, to use. Today, twenty years later, several such devices are available for in-office treatment. Reflecting research findings, they all include a means of coordinating tactile and audio stimulation with the eye movement. However, EMDR remains difficult to conduct on-line.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought these two professional interests clearly into focus with a clear vision of what was needed to provide EMDR in the virtual office: a portable, inexpensive device providing the patient a simple, comfortable device with which to receive the therapist-controlled stimuli, providing the therapist a clear view of the eyes and face of a patient, essential to the EMDR procedure.

I immediately recorded the idea and sketched my early concepts (headset design, laminated face piece, incorporated audio, sequential LED lights and blue tooth vibrators) in my Inventor's Notebook and began working on the design and how to get it out there where it is so desperately needed. I engaged the services of For Sale by Inventor.

In addition to all the details of filing for the patent, FSBI worked with me on design details and the presentation. Having experienced the demands of producing and marketing my earlier invention, I am looking for someone interested and capable of getting i-EMDR out there; into the hands of the thousands of trained therapists and twenty-fold that number of patients struggling to cope and heal in the real world of continued trauma. I am looking for someone to buy, lease or otherwise contract with me to manufacture, market, and distribute this creative solution to the problem of delivering effective health services to victims around the world.