Businessman Stuart Toole is pioneering a system that turns your computer into a therapist to beat anxiety and panic attacks.

Mr Toole, from Norton, Stourbridge, is preparing a national campaign to launch FearFighter, a system designed to help users conquer a range of moderate general anxiety disorders such as giving presentations through to phobias such as fear of travelling.

He is managing director of ST Solutions which has received a £ 150,000 investment from the Advantage Creative Fund, a venture capital fund supported by Advantage West Midlands to help SMEs.

The idea is to launch the FearFighter name in the health industry.

Mr Toole said: "Fear-Fighter is an eight to 12-week course of therapy delivered to any PC with internet access. It assesses your anxieties and fears, helps you plan a selftreatment schedule and monitors your progress and gives you feedback." He said the system, on clinical trials for eight years, had helped around 700 patients.

Mr Toole said: "Once you have received a referral from your local GP surgery or a member of your local community health team it is a simple and effective treatment, used in the privacy of your own home, and needs only a limited amount of computer skills.

"There is a long waiting list to see cognitive behaviour therapists and Fear-Fighter is a modern and effective solution which has provisionally been clinically accredited by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and is being used by a number of Primary Care Trusts around the country."

The software programme is based on the cognitive behaviour therapy work of Professor Isaac Marks, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Psychology, King's College, London, one of the world's leading experts on the treatment of panic, anxiety and phobias.

The programme also offers a choice of psychotherapy, an important part of the NHS modernisation agenda.

The £5 million Advantage Creative Fund is one of five venture capital funds established by Advantage West Midlands.

David Edmonds, chief executive of the ACF, said: "Our investment momentum is increasing rapidly. ST Solutions is our 11th investment, we have two more we will be announcing to the world very shortly and two pending for September."