Fobos.tech at Behavioral Health Tech 2026: what the US mental health market is telling us about VR therapy

fobos, 10/07/2026, 09:38 AM

On September 22–24, 2026, we were in Nashville for Behavioral Health Tech 2026, one of the leading US conferences on technology in mental health care. We came back with more than a dozen conversations with people who implement, fund and run behavioral health services every day, and with one very clear lesson: in clinical care, technology alone is not enough. What matters is how it fits into the therapist’s work.

Why Nashville

Behavioral Health Tech (BHT) took place at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center. It brings together health systems, providers, payers, digital health companies, investors and policymakers. For Fobos, these are exactly the groups we need to talk to as we prepare to enter the US market.

We went with three goals: to test how VR exposure therapy should be positioned in US care, to meet potential implementation and product partners, and to talk with the financial community about the company’s growth.

The trip followed our virtual participation in the American Psychological Association convention (APA 2026, August 6–8). APA gave us a view of what psychology is focused on today: digital tools in the therapeutic relationship, AI, ethics and implementation research. BHT was the business side of the same picture.

Who we met

The most valuable conversations were with the people responsible for implementation and clinical operations, not the number of business cards exchanged. We met, among others:

• leaders of practice integration and virtual behavioral health in large hospital systems, including public ones;
• executives of psychiatric hospitals, addiction recovery centers and behavioral health providers;
• founders of digital mental health tools, from clinical documentation and measurement-based care to revenue cycle management;
• practicing therapists who can assess our scenarios from the treatment-room perspective;
• representatives of Healthcare IT investors, banks and advisory firms;
• researchers interested in VR-assisted therapy.

We are now moving to focused conversations: understanding needs, defining use cases and agreeing on the conditions for potential pilots.

Three takeaways from BHT

1. Workflow beats the “wow” factor. VR turns heads at every booth. Decision-makers, however, ask different questions: how the tool fits into daily work, how long implementation takes, how therapists are trained, what data it collects and who pays for it. This confirms the direction we are taking Fobos: a platform for therapists, not a gadget.

2. The therapist stays at the center. Both at BHT and at APA, one theme kept coming back: technology should support clinicians, not replace them. In Fobos, the therapist leads the session and controls the exposure, while the patient uses a VR headset with their own smartphone. This model resonated strongly with the people we spoke to.

3. Evidence must be communicated precisely. US providers and investors expect solid data and a clear line between what research confirms today and what comes next. That is why our scientific collaborations matter so much.

Our study with West Virginia University

Our research partner in the US is West Virginia University. Together we are running an exploratory mixed-methods study of the feasibility and acceptability of implementing Fobos in rural behavioral health settings in Appalachia, a region where access to specialists is especially limited.

The study combines clinician and patient surveys with therapist interviews. It measures usability and ease of use, organizational readiness, trust, privacy, digital literacy and training needs. It answers an earlier, practical question: are therapists and patients willing and able to use this tool? We will share the results on this blog as soon as they are ready, and the research team is preparing a scientific publication based on them.

Where we come from

Fobos is a virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) platform for psychotherapists. More than 240 therapists already use it and have run over 1,100 sessions. We work with the TwójPsycholog.pl and Psymerge platforms, we are a member of the International Virtual Reality Healthcare Association (IVRHA), and our Scientific Board is chaired by Paweł Holas, MD, PhD (dr hab.).

What’s next

In the coming weeks we will turn the Nashville conversations into a small number of concrete processes: pilots with providers, product partnerships and conversations about funding our growth. At the same time, we are waiting for the WVU results, which will help us fit the product even more closely to therapists’ needs.

If you run a clinic or health system, build tools for therapists or research VR in psychotherapy, get in touch. We would love to talk.