Nami – A Gamified Mental Health Companion

🌟 Inspiration

In Singapore, 1 in 3 youths struggles with severe mental health symptoms. Among those prescribed psychotropic medications, up to 40% are non-adherent. As a medical student, I’ve seen how this affects recovery outcomes and the emotional toll it takes on both patients and caregivers. Often, non-adherence stems from low motivation, stigma, forgetfulness, or fear of side effects, rather than a lack of awareness.

I wanted to create a tool that supports youths in a way that feels intuitive, encouraging, and clinically sound. This led to the creation of Nami — short for Nurturing Adherence, Mindfulness & Insight — a gamified mental health companion designed to turn medication adherence into a meaningful and engaging daily habit.

💡 What it does

Nami transforms psychiatric medication adherence into an interactive experience that integrates:

🐾 A virtual pet that reflects the user’s real-time medication compliance
📸 OCR-based medication logging using Huawei’s Optical Character Recognition
💬 An AI-powered chatbot, aligned with local clinical guidelines, that provides guidance, answers questions, and detects red flags
📓 Mood journaling and heatmaps to help track emotional progress and medication patterns
🧠 A user-centric interface built with empathy and input from clinicians and students

Nami is designed to be patient-friendly, culturally relevant, and easily scalable across outpatient and youth wellness settings.

🛠️ How we built it

Frontend: React Native with Expo Router and Tailwind CSS
Backend: Python FastAPI, integrated with Airtable for initial data storage
OCR Integration: Huawei OCR for automatic medication data capture via camera
AI Chatbot: OpenAI API layered with escalation logic and links to local mental health resources
Design & Testing: Figma-based prototyping, validated through iterative feedback from clinicians (IMH) and student testers
Clinical Consultation: Worked closely with psychiatrists and nurses to ensure escalation flows, content tone, and chatbot boundaries are safe and aligned with practice

We also conducted simulated mental health scenarios including missed doses and suicidal ideation to evaluate chatbot safety and referral accuracy.

🚧 Challenges we ran into

Ensuring the AI chatbot remained clinically safe and culturally appropriate while maintaining a friendly, non-intrusive tone
Designing a gamification system that was motivating but sensitive to the seriousness of mental health
Balancing youth-friendly design with the need for robust backend and clinician-facing features
Managing a lean, multidisciplinary team across different institutions and time zones

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a functioning prototype that has already received positive feedback from clinicians and youth users
Developed a working chatbot that can safely handle red flags and direct users to relevant resources
Integrated a custom OCR system to reduce friction in medication logging

📚 What we learned

Gamification can drive real behavioral change when designed with care and psychological insight
AI in mental health must be transparent, bounded, and monitored — trust and safety come first
Clinician input and early user testing are critical to building something that users will actually use
The most effective solutions are not always the most complex — they are the ones that feel human

🚀 What's next for Nami – A Gamified Mental Health Companion

Our immediate next steps include:

Running pilot programs with selected schools and outpatient clinics
Applying for grants from IMDA, HPB, and MOE to support further development and deployment
Expanding our engineering team to improve gamification and backend architecture
Refining the chatbot through real-world data while enhancing safety protocols
Launching on iOS and Android with targeted outreach to Gen Z through TikTok, Instagram, and school partnerships

We believe Nami has the potential to reduce healthcare burden, improve long-term adherence, and empower youths to take ownership of their mental health journeys.