We believe that our project is in accordance to the proposed challenge: “The Isolation Solution” once this application can be used by several people that are, somehow, in isolation, whether through a space journey, teenagers that aren’t opened to a conversation with parents, elder people, people who live alone or even, because of COVID-19 or people who could adhere to social isolation. The application is responsible for tracking a user’s normality profile and identifying when there is a pattern that escapes from that profile, generating warnings for people in their support network so that they can become a constant presence through the moments when the users need the most. By virtually connecting loved ones that are distant because of the social isolation, the platform engages and motivates its users to turn attention to their own mental health and also enables the socialization and interaction between peers in a cooperation network, which is feedbacked by the daily progress of each individual by taking care of himself and the others.
We’ve chosen the “The Isolation Solution” challenge and worked with activities that identify stressful situations and prepare astronauts to live and work together for the success of their expeditions developed by NASA.
Unfortunately, the biggest motivator for proposing our solution was the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the beginning of the disease pandemic, the OMS has suggested and reinforced that social isolation measures are the best way to contain the spread of the virus.
Even before the pandemic, it was recognized that prolonged social isolation can adversely affect our health and well-being, as described in [5] [20].
Quarantine-related policies adopted around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic may increase the risk of depression, self-harm, self-neglect behavior and decline in cognitive functioning in a large portion of the population as described in [3].
Therefore, it is imperative that we contribute to mitigating the psychosocial impacts arising from social isolation.
Our solution is based on the construction of an application for mental health monitoring, using metrics collected from the cell phone and wearable technologies, such as smartwatches.
The metrics of application usage time, heart rate, and sleep pattern are used to draw a profile of normality for the user, using artificial intelligence. When these collected metrics go out of the user’s standard, the application is responsible for contacting the support network chosen by the user, which consists of a group with whom the user considers to be intimate and who can assist him at some point of vulnerability.
This project can be very beneficial in times of pandemic and in the post-pandemic context, since the application can be used in situations of social isolation, such as astronauts on a space trip, teenagers who are not open to dialogues with parents, the elderly and people living alone.
Since it is an application that integrates data from different technologies already present in daily life, like smartphones and smartwatches, for example, and uses artificial intelligence capable of recognizing moments of mental and/or physiological risk, the application is an innovative and a new solution in the market because of its ability to exhibit self-help suggestions to the user and notify their closest friends about their condition.
Furthermore, it is important to note that our solution is related to the four P's of P4 medicine - preventive, predictive, participatory, and personalized as:
Whether on Earth or in space, in order to ground and motivate, the application will offer solutions for social isolation.
As a reference, we used the Data that NASA and 4-H - a network that involves young people to reach their potential in life and work, which are developing activities that help young people apply the skills used by astronauts on expeditions in their daily lives.
We filtered a part of the methodology used because the original acts more like a mentor-learner relationship, in which, after performing the activities, the results are discussed. With what has been filtered, we create a bank of adapted activities, which through the application can be used to help a colleague at a time of vulnerability.
Since we do not separate by school grade, an activity for children can be useful for an adolescent or adult. An example is the Pipeline activity where there is a challenge to be done. In order for the activity to be done according to the profile of each person being helped, we do not offer a goal to be reached, but we give an opportunity to those who are helping to mount a challenge. We only make available a list of revisions that must be made in the course of the activity. In this way, the two (or more) people involved participate together to solve the problem.
In addition, NASA provides reports and articles involved in studies in its domains, mainly on issues related to sleep deprivation.
According to the article “Sleep deprivation impairs affordance perception behavior during an action boundary accuracy assessment”, sleep deprivation in astronauts directly affects their well being and activities performed during a space expedition. Taking into consideration, the application presents functionality that analyses the user’s sleep time, contributing to the identification of astronauts with sleep deprivation (what can be used on people on Earth).
The tools used for the final construction of the project were: Discord, Google Tools, Trello, Figma, and Animaker.
Youtube PITCH: https://youtu.be/DzKG-PJ1WOU
Moon prototype on Figma: https://www.figma.com/proto/jnHeB7s7LP79WQk9jT0jch/SpaceApps2020-v3?node-id=4%3A9&scaling=min-zoom