One Tap Buddy

“One Tap Buddy” is a mobile application that aims to provide immediate help to depressive individuals by using the power of social media and digital footprints, locator technologies, and AI - eventually linking them to the “right individuals” with just a single tap in the app.

“One Tap Buddy” is a mobile app that aims to link depressive individuals to the right people depending on their current mental state and location. The app will utilize technology to arrive at an accurate mental health assessment of the user, including interactive guide questions to establish the profile of the individual, as well as evaluation of the social media behavior of the participant. If available, we are open to using voice recognition software to facilitate interaction between the app and the user, with due recognition of rising technologies that assess current moods based on voice alone.

The app can serve as either a listener or a middleman to bridge a depressive individual with an accountability partner or a mental health professional. Based on the participant’s emotional state, the app will link him to his trusted buddies or accountability partners, or refer him to the nearest mental health therapist according to his location, like an “Uber” for help for depressed people.

The app will provide personalized mental health exercises to the participant based on the results of the assessment. That way, we can respond to the challenge of improving the user’s brain health and mental resilience.

If successfully implemented in the Philippines, the mobile app can affect change across the world by making sure that access to immediate help will lessen suicidal cases of depressed people. We believe in the value of personalized help and what friends and families can do to help alleviate the pain of depressed people.

There are 4.5 million depressed Filipinos - the highest in Southeast Asia - and yet only one out of 3 who suffer from depression will seek out the help of a specialist. In 2012 alone, as many as seven depressed Filipinos took their own lives in a day due to depression, not to mention underreported cases.

With the Philippines still lacking comprehensive mental health law, there's a need to raise community awareness and break down taboos on mental health by leveraging tech solutions. We want to make help as accessible as it could be when they're needed the most.

The world is going mobile and we believe that a mobile application will get a high user adoption rate. And because most lonely people find comfort in the entertainment that smartphones bring, we believe that the solution also lies in mobile.

Most depressed people do not want to go through the process of getting a therapist or mental health specialist. But with an easy-to-use app where they can talk to someone with just one tap, we believe that we can provide an effective solution to depression and loneliness.

Our solution aims to lessen the number of depressed people in the Philippines, as well as actual suicidal cases that arise out of such depression. We aim to target individuals  who have mental health issues and help them establish strong support base or link them to the right mental health professionals.

This way, we can also bridge the gap in addressing underreported cases of depression by serving as the middleman platform to connect depressive individuals to the providers of care or their support base,  which are their family and friends.

Track downloads in the app store - 30,000 people in the Philippines download the app

Our own metrics based in our app's approval system for "depression buddies" - All of the users have approved "depression buddies/accountability partners"

Database from the Philippines' mental health industry - At least 70% of mental health professionals signed up for their virtual services in our app

Our solution is unique because we're touching on a personalized approach to depression and mental health, which is directly based on one’s mental health  results using the latest technologies. This is like the Uber of mental health and depression, enabling access to help on times when they needed it the most.

With just one tap we can link an individual to his friends or families, or even a mental health professional. And this very simplified approach could save lives, especially in a developing country like the Philippines.

The fact that a close ‘buddy’ serves as a listener or a middle man allows a more human-centered experience when dealing with depression. Buddies are expected to have established better rapport and are more empathic with the depressive client and so, the latter is more likely to disclose his/her issue that contributes to depression.

We believe that a personalized approach to mental health enables human-centered conversations, when comfort is established and empathy can easily take part.

Our mobile app will be downloadable online via the App Store. We want to make the app free for the users, but we will charge a small fee for mental health professionals who will register in the platform.

Similar to other growth models of mobile apps, we want to be able to establish partnership with the mental health industry. Such collaboration will enable us to sustain financially and explore further opportunities for growth.

On the side of the users, we can establish a membership system when we already scale, where they can access some exclusive offers from upgraded membership.

Thirdly, we want to explore new markets, which is why when if it's successful here in the Philippines, we want to scale it up to Southeast Asia, and then to the greater Asian region in general.

User adoption can limit the success of our project especially if the technology isn't interactive enough for the target beneficiaries.

Another limiting factor is the availability of technology here in the Philippines to develop the design that we want to achieve.

And of course the limited budget we’re operating on.

We want to be able to contribute to the development of human-centered technologies by pitching a proposal that we strongly believe in to the right institution.  Aside from the financial support that we need to implement our mobile app, we hope to  we hope to leverage the network of the Solve Community, as well as the possible mentorship of experts from different fields, not to mention MIT’s tech experts.

None

Maybe Insight Timer, or other apps that indirectly target mental health or depression.