Chill Pill

Track

Assistive Technology Track

Inspiration

People react to different situations with a unique behaviour pattern. When their behaviour is not socially acceptable or is socially withdrawn; its only then we come to realize that there might be a deeper story behind their behavioral psyche than the one they portray physically.

So, by starting to realize and observe social anxiety, we came across information that people associated with it belong to a bigger set of people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

On discussing with a neuropsychologist and asking about the opportunity to use an immersive environment for the therapeutic purposes for people with PTSD and GAD, we received a positive response. Accordingly, diaphragmatic breathing and guided imagery are efficacious practices that aide an individual struggling with symptoms of PTSD in better managing their symptoms of panic and anxiety.

In simpler terms: The experience of panic and anxiety associated with PTSD can be overwhelming as the brain goes into fight or flight mode. This deep breathing exercise and calming imagery help to calm down the hyperactive parts of the brain that get triggered into panic mode. By calming their breathing, patients can help their body and brain to create a safe place where anxiety is easier to manage.

Further, diaphragmatic breathing has also shown improvement in symptoms from the following clinical research areas: – Hypertension – Congestive heart failure (CHF) – Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) – Asthma – Hot flashes – Insomnia – Depression and anxiety – Pain – Oxidative stress

What it does

The VR experience take PTSD and GAD patient into a safe and peaceful environment to meditate, relax and play stress relieving games.

Our App Has

Three relaxing 360 4k videos which take the patients through guided diaphragmatic breathing exercise
One Forest Environment built to move around and practice meditation
A game - that acts as a stress buster and also improves cognitive learning ability

How I built it

We started with learning how to setup Oculus and Unity Divided the team to 4 groups Content, Network, Development and Design

We got the insight from NeuroPsychologist and stitched 360 videos with diaphragmatic breathing exercises
Got a domain using Domain.con and used AWS student services to host it
All the 360 4K videos are on the server and is streamed intro the app as we use it
Started an app from scratch in Unity and managed to put everything in place

Challenges I ran into

We managed to get one oculus from MLH hardware warehouse and getting a VR ready PC and screen was itself a challenging task
Learnt Unity from scratch, so pretty much everything was challenging
Understanding ways to stream videos from AWS into Oculus

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The team was very collaborative - people stayed as much as they could and this is officially our first Hackathon Didn't sleep for 48 hours We learnt unity from scratch We learnt to work with AWS Discussed with a Psychologists and worked out the Customer Segment

What I learned

We learnt to work with Oculus Unity Adobe Premier Pro Customer Discover Our responsibility in creating a better environment for people who need support