SOPHIE ye

1. Problem

For patients with opioid addictions, behavioral change programs attempting to reduce addiction and overdose risks have had limited long-term success. A number of barriers exist to prevent success in sustainable behavior change. Failed cases often involve:
- physical location distance between patients and recovery centers, especially in rural areas;
- continued prescribing of opioids and/or co-prescribing of sedatives among providers to patients better suited for different therapies or lower doses;
- current technologies that are designed to reduce addiction and/or overdose do not effectively incorporate knowledge and lessons from behavior change science on how to create sustainable behavior change.
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Building on insights from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Code-A-Thon in December of 2017, the University of California Institute for Prediction Technology (UCIPT) hosted its own Hack-A-Thon featuring HHS. We were asked to design a personalized behavior change app within 24 hours that could be applied by patients, their families, and/or health care providers for long-term reductions in overdose-related risk behaviors.
Problem
rEASEARCH
sOLUTION
UI
ABOUT
project 06

2. Research

Questions studied during our research process included:
1. What are the causes of opioid addiction?
2. What is the process of long-term recovery for opioid addiction?
3. Who are our potential users?
4. What qualities exist in people who overcome opioid addiction?
- Motivations: through motivational interview with specialists
- Behavior change: learn the ways that maladaptive thoughts and beliefs kept them using, and develop problem-solving skills to avoid drug addiction in the future
5. What are the qualities of successful programs that help patients overcome opioid addiction?
- Cannabinoids and ketamine: Similar non-opioid pain management program specifying certain pain with much lower risk of addiction and harmful effect
- Better public health surveillance: Strength the understanding of opioid and effects
- Naloxone: Opioid Overdose Reversal
- Easy access to treatment and recovery services
- Providing support for cutting-edge research (Hackathon, sponsored research)
6. What are the qualities of failed programs/recovering addicts?
- Escalated doses needed to numb pain increase disability due to dependence or addiction/ Long-term effects the efficiency of opioid
- Individuals falsely feel in control of their drug use, for example, they don’t know they are overdosing, no family or friends monitoring, no access to specialist or specialized information
- Lack of easy access to the program. Mental health issue - depression, bipolar, anxiety, schizophrenia


Thanks to HSS and UCIPT, we had access to various data sources related to opioid outcomes, as well as alternative approaches related to the crisis (e.g., virtual reality and augmented reality data, cannabis data, wearable and social media data, and data on behavior change approaches).

3. Solution

Through our research, we identified three cornerstones that lead to successful recovery from opioid addictions:
- Supportive community
- Progress tracking and milestones
- Recognition of behavior patterns
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We created and designed four core features that aim to provide such functionalities.

4. Core Feature UI

HOME PAGE:
- The Home page highlights key features to promote user engagement.
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EVENT PAGE:
- Event page provides a shared calendar.
- The shared calendar displays events invitation sent by family and friends. It syncs with users’ calendars.
- Our shared calendar aims to remind patients that they are not isolated with their problems.

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FORUM PAGE:
- The Forum page is a safe and private place where patients can interact with other recovering addicts.

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PROGRESS PAGE:
- The Progress page allows users to visualize milestones and celebrate their improvement.
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5. About the team

Team Member: Ting Wei Lin, Will Yu, Meng (Sophie) Ye, Anchit Roy, Hanchen Wang
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