AURA Digital Workforce Solution

The recent COVID-19 pandemic raised essential questions regarding access and approach to mental health services. The present healthcare system is insufficient to meet the increase in demand for professional assistance. Our company has produced a fully functional treatment platform that employs a digital medical and nonmedical workforce gathered around mental healthcare. At the same time, the AURA platform offers treatment tools, training, counseling, and any other step in treatment. The goal is to increase awareness and accessibility to mental health while creating new job offerings for those employed from their home offices. Within the next few months, we are expecting a significant number of candidates in the target states in Australia. With our technology employed, the success rate in the near future is expected to expand globally. The expansion of mental health options is a way to increase treatment success and overcome problems in global healthcare.

Our company aims to tackle two major challenges: the increase in unemployment caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic and the demand for mental healthcare solutions. The number of mental health services in Australia has more than doubled since 2019, and the trend is rising exponentially. However, one in five Australians (20%) report high or very high levels of psychological distress (2020c; ABS 2021). Furthermore, it is reported that there is one professional psychotherapist for 1098 people in Australia, indicating a great shortage of professional therapists (https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...). Although the government-funded service activities have increased, the prolonged stress-induced state seeks new telehealth options. AURA offers the complete solution for telehealth treatment and a secure place for candidates to find interesting jobs in tech development, system maintenance, marketing, sales, occupational and psychotherapy, and more. With the launch of our platform, we will help some of the 679,000 unemployed people in Australia (https://www.abs.gov.au/) realize their work potential. 

AURA digital workforce solution is a multilevel treatment platform that uses transformative technologies to offer complete mental healthcare. A platform is an interconnected group of treatment solutions, including online counseling, Location-Based VR System, Continued Care Mobile App, Secure Data Storage and Analysis. We are interested in increasing the existing interest in mental healthcare by investing in telehealth treatment options and diagnostic tools. Therefore, we are certain to collaborate with medical facilities and institutions of higher education in research and development projects. Our platform is designed to create an online user-friendly treatment system that allows therapists and patients to create personalized treatment options and immediately proceed to treatment. In this manner, we can support more home office personnel and decrease waiting time for the patients. 

AURA's solution is meant to serve present and future employees in the workforce for the digital future of work with affordable and equitable digital skills, training, and employment opportunities. We are targeting the workforce previously employed in the healthcare administration, sales and marketing, software development, data analysis,  mental healthcare/ therapy, and those willing to switch to sectors in our interest. What we are offering for the digitalized workforce is a complete virtual workspace. As was shown in the COVID-19 pandemic situation, mental health is 100% necessary for any community's social and economic prosperity and thus one of the sectors that will gain more government funding in the upcoming period. However, due to the lockdowns and other anti-pandemic restrictions economy is under a significant burden to sustain the budget and restart and normalize the financial progress. By opening virtual offices, telehealth companies are revolutionizing the future of medicine and accessibility and open workflow for those underprivileged by office location, physical condition, mobility, and another obstacle for future employment. 

By using a virtual office and online communication platform, AURA aims to increase the digital workforce hiring rate, optimize the employment process, free online training courses, and a stable working environment. In addition, workers' previous and future career orientation will be considered for hiring and working protocol. Our company is at the forefront of technology expansion, revolutionizing the general view on medical services and workspace accessibility. All those interested in mental healthcare can benefit from our program and get an equal opportunity to gain financial stability in these volatile and insecure times.  

We are in the Pilot stage of product development. However, the AURA platform has already been tested for therapeutic purposes in the Veteran Community of Nevada; we are closely collaborating with the community members and therapists alike. We are also opening student psycho and occupational therapists positions to include them in our future expansion development. Our goal is to evolve the workforce network to the extent needed to be an autonomous treatment entity with a complete digitalized workspace. That way, the virtual office business model can be fully implemented and enable staff to work from their home office.    

We are a Digital Health and Wellness software company that makes Virtual Reality experiences to enhance therapy, a patient management platform to track patient's mental health progress and improvement, and a mobile telehealth solution to bridge the gap between inpatient and outpatient care. Up to this point, we have collaborated with the veteran community, NGOs, the addiction centers, and others regarding mental-health-related causes and initiatives in the US. 

75% of our team is female, and one of our male team members and investors is a military veteran. We work in mental health, so many of our contractors and team members are driven by a personal desire to improve society and mental well-being and are women, people of color, military-affiliated, have disabilities or mental illness.                                                                           We actively encourage student therapists to engage in our workflow and offer free training for all of our collaborators. If we won the ServiceNow Digital Equity Prize, we would invest in the expansion of our team. This way, our company can grow, enhance the workflow, and create better solutions to US mental healthcare.

AURA platform offers complete mental healthcare, access to state-of-the-art therapeutic tools, transformative technologies, billing, expansion, further research and development, and digital workforce integration. With that in mind, it is a step forward to unique solutions in the face of global health and medical crisis. In addition, introducing a virtual office is more likely to attract a previously overlooked workforce such as people with preexisting conditions (agoraphobia, social anxiety, autism, PTSD, etc.). With the shortage of professional therapeutic staff, having round-the-clock mental care and technical assistance is also advantageous. The options for administrative, technical, developmental, and other job positions offered through the AURA platform present a more efficient and reliable business model than the existing employment options. 

By implementing our company aims and strategies, we set a good example for other small business companies and expand the global market network.

AURA is an AI-Driven Solution for Mental and Behavioral Health with the mission of scaling accessibility of treatment to patients and providing diagnostic tools to physicians to go past patient self-reporting to prevent misdiagnosis and speed healing to reduce the chances of relapse.

The product is in the form of mobile telehealth and communication digital platform containing a doctor/patient portal, continued care mobile app, location-based virtual reality (LBVR) system, workspace platform, clinical decision support tool, electronic medical records (EMR) storage, and data processing/analyzing dashboard.   

As mentioned, AURA technology is currently being tested, and the preliminary data show great success in the consumer testimonies and clinician evaluation forms. Once this round of testing is completed, we will be able to discuss the findings further. 

The main risk in the introduction of this technology is the local distribution of internet coverage. Due to unexpected weather conditions platform portal can be locally unaccessible. We are working on additional satellite connectivity solutions for every computer unite connected to our main server. We are currently working on covering privacy and security risks.  

Our solution is currently being tested in 4 mental healthcare facilities in the US. The number of users is around 500. Once the testing period ends, the number of users in the US will reach 3 fold increase in one year. We are not in the position of making predictions regarding the Australian market, but our goal is to reach at least 1000 users in the first year of operations. After testing the Australian market, we consider partnering with a tech company in China and pursuing our business model.  

This years' prime goal is to optimize our digital tools for general and commercial use in Australia. The only way we can do so is to expand our team to build our product 100% Hippa compliant and synchronized with the industry and market demands. 

We are set to contact all the mental health facilities in the states of Victoria and New South Wales by the end of the next year. After the positive start, we will propagate our impact on the entire continent. 

Parallel with the Australian market, we are preparing to partner up with two companies in China and bring our technology to another level of expansion in the ever-growing Chinese tech market. 

There are still a few projects that we started in the US. We are dedicated to continuing last year's mission to donate one year's mental healthcare scholarship to underprivileged candidates. We are also actively participating in the non-profit initiatives in our home state of Washington and our community of Bainbridge Island. 

Since the forming of the start-up, we have kept all of our employees and expanded our team. 

In the second year, we have raised two times more funds than our first-year budget.

We have successfully collaborated with mental healthcare facilities and started testing our product. 

AURA technology has expanded to the Australian market and is taking large steps towards the Chinese market. 

Our product gained the trust of the public and professionals alike. 

7 full-time employees

5 part-time employees

Mental health is grossly underfunded and underlooked in comparison to other healthcare sectors. Our mission is to treat mental health like physical health and determine viable treatment options from data and patient self-reporting. We work in mental health, so many of our contractors and team members are driven by a personal desire to improve society and mental well-being. 

Working for a startup helped our team understand the extra time and energy needed to invest in a novel product. As a result, our team members come from various professional backgrounds: scientific, marketing, software and virtual reality design, marketing, business, economics, and medicine. In the course of two years, we have fast-tracked our product completion and, in the process, expanded our team from 4 to 12 employees and 7 volunteers. We are proud to say that we have completed testing on our prototype and all the adjustments in the midst of the global pandemic and survived all the obstacles. 

Without a doubt, we will succeed in our long-term goals and reach the expected milestones. After this year, we expect to have a positive review from the testing facilities in the US and start expanding the network in Australia. That way, we can expand our team and implement the digital workforce strategy on a larger scale.  

As mentioned, 75% of our team is female, and one of our male team members and investors is a military veteran. The team is multicultural, diverse, and heterogeneous but united around the same interests and goals. We have an open idea policy and all of team contributes to the final shape of project deliverables. The company's leadership has been earned through results and interest with equal opportunity for every team member. We intend to continue and grow our business strategy with new members through mutual respect, positive workflow practice, and successful leadership orientation.  

As a small business, we are keen to expand our team and reach our project milestones in the shortest time possible. This is the reason we are applying for the 2021 Digital Workforce Challenge. However, to set up all the variables to start the AURA platform, we need to make sure we have enough leverage to sustain our team and support the expansion. We are also interested in forming new collaborations with respectable institutions to enhance the research in transformative technologies for telehealth. We believe that Solve can be a beneficiary contribution to both of those interests. 

We are currently scouting for personnel to overtake the franchise responsibilities and tasks through our partner company in Australia. However, due to the delicate nature of the business relations, we are not able to discuss any more details at the moment. 

After the elimination process, we will be in the position to start working immediately. However, we do not wish to disturb the stability of our budget or compromise with company leverage. Therefore we would like to raise all the funding necessary before we sign in any new team members. This is the reason we are applying for this Challenge. 

We want to partner with tech development and research institutions such as MIT to help us enhance mental telehealth and healthcare options on a global scale. We are investing significant resources in optimizing virtual reality and biosensory tools integrated into our therapy tools. We would be interested in connecting to institutions of higher education and testing facilities in the upcoming stages of our product development. 

Medical facilities, such as mental health treatment hospitals and clinics, are also at the top of our partner-wish list. We can offer free service and training to their staff and build trust through positive business practice.