The project "Baltic Game Industry - Empowering a Booster for Regional Development" (BGI) is a three-year project within the European regional development programme Interreg for the Baltic Sea Region (BSR).22 partners from Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden are jointly developing practical solutions to strengthen the digital games industry. The BGZ Berliner Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit mbH (www.bgz-berlin.de) acts as lead partner.BGI aims at fostering innovation power and the emergence of a powerful game business scene around the Baltic Sea, strengthening internationalisation and cooperation across stakeholders and countries, and finally making the region a game business hotspot with a joint branding.

The core element is the installation of durable game incubation structures, programmes and schemes that effectively support the emergence and viability of game start-ups.BGI comprises three components - improvement of framework conditions, incubation capacity building and enlarging business opportunities for the game industry beyond entertainment.The project will result inimprovements in regulations, strategies and schemes, which guide the business support for start-ups in the eight countries, with a Good Practice catalogue on favourable framework and policies for game business developmentfunctional game incubators providing consulting and mentoring support to game start-ups, with model schemes and manuals/guidelines for game incubation programming and financing, mentoring and international cooperation for game business development increased business power of and business opportunities for the BSR game scene, with a functional VR application for therapeutic use, a VR Health Reference Model and recommendations for VR apps in other industries.

VR in Non-Game Sectors in the 4th work package (WP) of the Baltic Game Industry INTERREG project. It is aimed at illustrating how game companies may widen their product portfolio with new products made for clients in non-game industries, how to increase their market potentials and thus allow for a more stable economic development in the BSR. This WP will specifically deduce the potential of virtual reality (VR) in the non-game industry, using the example of the healthcare sector. The VR has been selected, as VR - with the early formation of an ecosystem of vendors and partners - shows high capabilities (exceeding those of augmented reality) to open up new markets in the next 10 years. A study by Goldman Sach s predicts the estimated market share of VR-related business by 2025 to be 80 billion dollars in the "base case" and 182bn in an "accelerated uptake" scenario. Video games have only a p art of 11.6bn in the "base case".

The rest is spread across different industries, with healthcare as one of the biggest estimated shares: HEALTHCARE 5.1bn, military 1.4bn, engineering 4.7 bn, real estate 2.6bn, entertainment 3.2bn, live events 4.1bn. Since BSR is among the most dynamic healthcare markets in Europe (especially regarding rehabilitation, see scanbalt.org), the WP concentrates on detecting framework conditions of VR u sage in therapeutic utilization in hospitals. Using the example of a therapeutic VR application in the area of addiction therapy, the entire process for the implementation of VR applications in hospitals and therapeutic facilities is to be exemplarily pursued and documented. Game developers will learn about conditions and requirements in non-game industries (within the health sector and beyond) by using the VR Health Reference Model and the VR Best Prac tice Catalogue, developed in this WP. The WP outputs are also aimed to demonstrate VR potentials to the non-game industries, improving approachability. In view of this, the WP contribute s to project objective 3 'strengthening business opportunities for the game industry'.