Overcoming Isolation| The Isolation Solution

The Isolation Solution

Social distancing policies enacted the world over during the COVID-19 pandemic have left many people socially isolated. Your challenge is to develop innovative solutions to combat social isolation.

Overcoming Isolation

Summary

The app will be a global guide to help people overcome isolation with effective guidance and information, directing people to appropriate professionals that will help them.

How We Addressed This Challenge

The project consists in helping people with orientation for Covid-19, and also for psychological issues that are increasing with social isolation.

Create a simple and intuitive app, where people can do a self-assessment and receive guidance on Covid-19, and can receive emotional assistance when they are not feeling well psychologically. Using data from security sources, such as the WHO (World Health Organization), the app will be a global guide for the population about Covid-19 and mental health care in the isolation period.

While using the app is possible to make a quick assessment to check the symptoms of Covid-19, if a person have many symptoms, the addresses of the nearest places for testing or receiving medical care will appear on the screen. The app will provide contact phones of nearby hospitals for people to have professional assistance and be guided according to the measures of the region to carry out tests and get specific assistance.

For cases of emotional support, the app shows tips to alleviate mental and physical symptoms, in order to calm and guide people in the best way. Then the app will show a suggestion to make psychological consultations and/or to contact life-enhancing programs recognized by the IASP - International Association for Suicide Prevention.

In the app, people can get general guidelines for leaving the house safely, for example, how to take care of themselves to go to the market, pharmacy, during family meetings. And tips of how to have a good mental health during social isolation.

How We Developed This Project

Our team has as main objective to help people to go through this pandemic moment, so this challenge seemed to be the right one. The app guides you about Covid-19 and mental health, it also provides information about safe physical interactions. Based on NASA satellites, pollution rates are decreasing, our project will help people to adapt to the new way of life, which has less frequency of locomotion while maintaining improvements in environmental conditions.

The biggest problem we faced was finding simple and clear ways to show the user that the app is a help / guide, so that it is not misunderstood making it look like you will have professional assistance while using the app, just the best guidance and how contact the appropriate professionals.

Project Demo

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dSSQhlphuihKb159xeqjFCb_DAGoTuB7g2hOF8G86b0/edit?usp=sharing

Data & Resources
  • NASA has specific studies of people in isolation because of astronauts on missions. Isolation itself has risks that can impact the mental health and cause behavioral changes, and it helps to see that the two themes, isolation and mental health, walk together.

https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/social-isolation/in-context

Hazards of Human Spaceflight | Hazard 2: Isolation & Confinement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPinASEKA_I&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1FYk1lkdh4

  • U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

https://dr2.nlm.nih.gov/search/?q=&data_type=10%7C4

Global Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Global Judging process.