Virtual Reality applications are becoming more commonplace for educational and recreational purposes, and also show great promise for clinical purposes. Common conditions such as chronic lower back pain, functional abdominal pain and irritable bowel syndrome affect thousands of patients, and could be managed more effectively through the use of VR, either by doing exercises that gradually improve the range of head and neck motion, or by offering a distraction from pain or discomfort during treatment or at home. The VARUS project was spearheaded by SyncVR and Almende to take advantage of this possibility.

The goal of VARUS is to create dedicated VR interventions for the aforementioned conditions and goals, making use of the data that VR goggles and peripheral devices (such as gloves) collect to improve the effectiveness of individual apps. This will be achieved through the development of a common module that collects and analyses medically relevant data, and makes conclusions available through an API.