RippleBot

Inspiration

As a counseling intern a few years ago and as a mental health consultant when I worked in human services, I saw an opportunity within peer-to-peer services to train peer coaches to deliver quality care in addiction recovery. As we are increasingly reliant on our mobile phones to communicate and maintain relationships, my team and I saw an opportunity to train coaches and boost efficiency by leveraging chatbot technology. A product featuring chatbot enabled interactive training combined with an easy to use platform can increase peer coach/sponsor retention, increase the quality of such services, and improve outcomes by contributing to addiction recovery. There is a direct individual and societal benefit where people are less likely to filter through expensive higher levels of care, and this also contributes to an increase in their quality of life.

What it does

Ripple is a platform for connecting peer coaches to client peers, built around a private chat app, featuring interactive chatbot training for the coach to facilitate supportive communication. The suggestions offered to the coach are inspired by motivational interviewing evidence based therapy techniques.

How I built it

We did not get around to developing it, however likely would have used Ruby.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

It was my second Hackathon and my teammates first.

What I learned

Building the logic to create an interactive Chatbot.

What's next for RippleBot

I'd love to carry this idea forward as a passion project.