Buddy

By Sidekick Studios
Trialled with SLaM

Mental health conditions affect so many of us. At any one time, just over 20 per cent of working-age women and 17 per cent of working-age men are affected by low-level mental health conditions such as depression or anxiety. These can become serious, and have a serious impact on propensity to work, family life and social environments.*

Sidekick Studios is developing Buddy to reduce the cost of mental health care by creating better-timed interventions from professional services, and by encouraging the use of personal social networks.

Designed around an internet-enabled digital radio, Buddy is a social care service for people living in the community who have longterm mental health conditions. The device allows patients suffering from depression to 'broadcast' their mood to a selected and secure social network. Users turn a dial on the Buddy radio to share how they are feeling, and the service updates their status in real time via email, SMS, Facebook and Twitter to their support network of friends, family and mental health carer. This creates a new level of responsiveness and collaboration across professional and non-professional carers.

The service is currently being piloted with the South London and Maudesley NHS Trust, and is being co-designed with mental health users, their care teams and their peers.

By harnessing networks of professional carers, friends and families to work alongside each other, Buddy aims to provide better realtime support to individuals, using data collected to co-ordinate the community response, increase staff productivity and  encourage the ultimate goal: self-management. Buddy’s goal is to change the way care is delivered, reducing demand for  professional interventions and enabling genuine care in the community.

* Department of Health (2009) 'New Horizons: a shared vision for mental health.'  London: Department of Health.