Empathetic Ear

Talk your way through it

We at "hold my hand" are developing a conversation app to help disengaged adults struggling with anxiety, loneliness, stress etc. to talk through it and re-build social skills, improve mental health and achieve higher productivity. This app uses AI bots trained by humans to initiate conversations and overcome mental health professional shortfall.

Background - Humans need social connections to thrive. It has been proven time and again through research that socially active and connected individuals are generally happier, have fewer health issues and live longer.

Over the course digital revolution and spread of messaging and social media apps, physical and in-person interactions have reduced. The social fabric has been further eroded in the last two years due to COVID restrictions and need for people to isolate.

Gone are the days when colleagues, friends, neighbors, could easily and without pretense catch up to share their joys and sorrows, consult, advise and find resolutions for everyday stress, loneliness, work fatigue etc. This has resulted in socially inadept folks resorting to professional help. Despite the pandemic, digital first approach, our need to find a listening ear has remained unchanged. If anything, it has gone up.

Unfortunately, in current super charged atmosphere it's not easy to start a conversation with anyone. If you can carefully navigate all political, personal and other contentious issues, you are likely to be faced with privacy and availability concerns.

Mental wellness Market

Global mental health market is over $ 400 B and will cross $ 500 B by 2030

US share of this will reach over $ 100 B by 2030.

One in 6 Americans (close to 50 M) face mental health issue every year.

Global Mental health apps market clocked over $ 38 B last year.

Vision - Building a platform where a group of virtual friends are available for chatting at any time, don’t judge, are empathetic, attentive and responsive. They are there only for you. Pick up the phone (or receive calls at regular intervals), open the app and start talking. Using this platform, we can re-learn our social skills and build rewarding social connections.

Problem statement - Loneliness is a major concern across the board and there is no overnight fix. There are several apps in the market targeted towards mental health but they all guide users to watch wellness videos, perform mental exercises, build an AI replica or connect them with counselors. There are some groups organizing local social events but for lonely folks, living solo and managing daily health or work challenges, being socially active is not an option.

The challenge with these approaches is the “one size fits all” mindset of apps, short supply of counselors and users apathy to mental exercises and my personal favorite, no alternatives when progress in not linear.

Solution - We focus on the fundamental need of humans to talk and share with an empathetic listener. We can solve this need by building an AI based virtual conversation environment. Talking is simpler, natural and impactful (conversations can motivate and mobilize us).

App users can converse with others (human trained AI bots) in a conducive atmosphere at their own pace and comfort. Further, we can use tools to analyze their responses, further customize the mobile persona to meet their changing needs, identify destructive patterns and recommend remediation measures. Based on the user's willingness, these bots can introduce other humans and add them to the conversation, enabling human connection.

step 1 – ‘conversational’ or ‘talking’ AI bot – virtual audio conference ("room") connecting users with AI bots matching their persona.
step 2 – AI nudges users to respond or participate in these conversations by posing questions on relevant topics while the bots are conversing.
step 3 – Admin feature provides overview of progress or engagement analysis for medical professionals (enables guardians to set alerts and track progress)
step 4 - Human in the loop - as and when the user is ready to interact with other like minded folks, bots can add them to the conversation.
step 5 - Bots can remind users about upcoming family events and enabling them to send e-cards or messages.

Pre-requisites for Step 1 - AI will customize "rooms" on users inputs to ensure we have a conducive atmosphere

Capture user persona (likes, dislikes etc.) – This enables AI to build a virtual room specific to user's past, needs and comfort.
Capture user profile (age, ethnicity etc.) – This enables AI to customize bots to users profile so that they have common ground to talk and share
Capture user specifics (job, location etc.) – This enables AI to introduce relevant, engaging content (from web/internal/external sources)

Other applications of platform solution -

A common trend faced by many organization is the fall in employee engagement and resulting drop in productivity. These trends reflect low morale, employee disengagement.

Corporates rely on annual employee polls/surveys to get a pulse. Post that, they resort to usual trainings to address these challenges and try to stem the decline. This is an example of 'one size fits all' mindset (assuming same training will work for all levels of disengaged employees) hence the effects are temporary at best or even negative in some cases.

While this problem cannot be fully attributed to mental health, it might feed upon underlying individual or team issues. We can employ Conversational AI bots to actively identify and engage workers with low morale. This is a multi-level engagement workflow which can be customized by employers and resulting analysis is shared with HR to address individual concerns.

Responsive and interactive employees are first step towards engaged and productive workforce.

This can be used to customize training modules or courses for Online education. Currently all online courses are static and monotonous in nature. Using this platform, we can make online learning fun, interactive and configure to users actual progress.

This platform can also be used by Recruitment and hiring teams and agencies. By customizing the AI content for skill (job) specific discussions, we can remove dependence on HR individuals to schedule, conduct and rate interviews. Potential candidates can attend AI based interviews based on their convenience and AI will share feedback, comparative assessment and ranking with HR.

Safe guards – Work with Loneliness and mental health experts to build conversation topics based on users age, background. Apply CBT, EBT and other guidelines to train algorithms and build guard rails. Identify metrics to track progress.

No PHI or health related data is captured or stored.

AI can also be trained to identify relevant words and patterns and related alert levels so that appropriate intervention can be recommended . Prevent misuse of the AI tool from disengaging in “restricted” topics.

Current stage - Working with SMEs to finalize design and features for MVP

Next steps - Product market fit, identify user base, team finalization, Funding and work on Cloud, mobile and AI models design

Business Model

B2C – Users can download the app and use the free version for 7 days. If they need additional features like reporting, participate in more than one call per day or continue the app after 7 days, they will have to sign up for monthly subscription. The target demographics are solo seniors and adults looking for social connection to fulfill their need of talking thereby reduce stress, loneliness etc.

B2B2C – We will be partnering with Primary care offices or counselling providers. They can recommend this app to their patients. Referring physician or counsellor will get monthly progress reports.

B2B – Direct marketing to US corporates who see a fall in productivity post social restrictions and work from home. They are keen to deploy tools to improve employee engagement.