Vega| 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.

Vega

Summary

VEGA is your virtual friend based on artificial intelligence to help people with mental and emotional conditions impaired by social isolation to minimize the impacts caused by depression, using word comparison techniques to assess the user's psychological state, deciding whether to refer or not to a volunteer psychologist, accredited on the platform.

How We Addressed This Challenge

VEGA is a platform/application designed to combat loneliness, fear, stress, and anxiety, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The platform has a BOT, a virtual friend, who talks to the user. Depending on the conversation, the BOT may suggest music, books, games, among others. If during the conversation a depressive, anxious language or that leads the artificial intelligence to understand that the user needs psychological assistance is noticed, he refers the user to a professional registered within the platform, increasing the chance of cure, besides maintaining a contact human.

How We Developed This Project

The biggest inspiration is to help people with psychological and emotional problems. During the quarantine of COVID-19, many lost family members, friends, were left alone at home, stressed with the work at home office, afraid of the news, and endlessly imagining what would happen if they left on the street. Our goal is to help fight depression and anxiety, encouraging the user to chat with a virtual friend, giving tips on music, videos, games, thus fighting loneliness.  We research resources in the areas of technology and psychology, to support our project and create a strong and solid base. We use the data as a way to assist in monitoring people who face COVID-19 and are experiencing psychological problems, as well as a way to help these people.

Project Demo
Data & Resources

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ : Health;
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/dr2/Psychological_Stress_Associated_with_the_COVID-19_Crisis_14.pdf : Psychological Stress associated with COVID 19;
https://dr2.nlm.nih.gov/search/?q=&data_type=10%7C4 : Mental health issues;
https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/saude/2020/05/09/estudo-indica-aumento-em-casos-de-depressao-durante-isolamento-social : Cases of depression during the pandemic;
https://saude.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,covid-faz-casos-de-estresse-e-ansiedade-mais-que-dobraremno-brasil,70003294817 : Stress and anxiety during the pandemic;
https://api.nasa.gov/ : NASA API's;
https://www.contagionlive.com/news/covid-19-isolation-pediatric-anxiety-depression : COVID-19 Isolation Increases Pediatric Anxiety, Depression;
https://open.nasa.gov/open-data/: NASA open-data

Tags
#virtual friend, #artificial intelligence, #BOT, #depression, #anxiety, # psychology
Global Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Global Judging process.