Learnemic

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that non-adherence and noncompliance significantly limit the effectiveness of interventions installed during an outbreak and, hence, carry tremendous social and economic cost.

We are witnessing growing unrest against social distancing measures and dissatisfactory willingness for vaccination. Correlation of supportive attitude was observed with numerous factors like education, understanding disease progression and transmission, trust in authorities, and higher vulnerability. 

Hence, even a customized explanation of the necessity of interventions would hardly be always successful. But imagine letting a person learn that very necessity by playing! And that’s something that we all share: as kids, we got to know our world through games, and still today - we all like to play. 

Playful mastering of epidemic-awareness - this is what we, a team consisting of teachers from academy, scientists, developers, epidemics modelers and doctors, will make a reality. 

And yes, as everyone, we do like to play.

Our solution targets the third challenge category:

"Prevent the spread of misinformation and inspire individuals to protect themselves and their communities, including through information campaigns and behavioral nudges."

As said, we have witnessed various aspects of non-adherence and noncompliance during the ongoing pandemic. Studies demonstrate that even as low as 7% of the population may adhere to all regulations and noncompliant behaviour may affect more than 50%.

This is nothing new. Just pre-COVID-19 medication non-adherence solely is estimated to cost the US healthcare system $100B-$300B.

Compliant behavior has been shown to correlate with e.g. education, understanding disease progression and transmission, trust in authorities, and higher vulnerability. Twisting this list, we see that the lack of these factors is then in close connection with noncompliance.

Our solution directly demonstrates to the users the usecase of interventions, vaccination and, in addition, their necessity and effects. We believe that by experiencing and being in control of the dynamics of an epidemic, they will  gain solid understanding and appreciation. That, in turn, provides a natural shield against misinformation and, even in case of distrust in authorities, will increase the acceptance of interventions resulting in an increase of compliant behavior in the population.

It is never too early, nor too late to learn about the importance and effects of personal and communal hygiene, social distancing, testing, contact-tracing, and vaccination in both preventing and mitigating an outbreak.

We have two objectives:

• A non-profit gamified educational program guiding through these concepts customized according to local needs with a special focus on developing countries.

• A smartphone-optimized strategy game. The users will become part of crisis management supported by e.g. a news feed, surveys, forecasts in augmented reality.

The close connection to reality is a key factor. Data from past and present will make combatting e.g. COVID-19 or the black plague realistic and that will challenge users to try bettering real crisis-management strategies. 

Should a new epidemic emerge, adapting our solutions with the disease characteristics and data is straightforward. Hence, we obtain a real-time, reliable communication channel to all of our users.

Let us emphasize that our solution will encourage free-thinking and shall not constrain the users to stay within a “box”. As we present an interface much alike what authorities are actually looking at, they not only acquire an epidemiological viewpoint, but they are implicitly recruited resulting in a pool of thousands of highly motivated modelers.

The primary focus audience comprises users of our solutions. The gamified environment is inevitably engaging mostly younger generations and that is precisely the most risk-tolerant segment of society during an epidemic scenario. For example, it is not a specialty of COVID-19 that elder, more vulnerable age groups display significantly higher willingness for vaccination and better adherence of social distancing measures nor is it a novelty that non-compliant behavior is usually observed within the younger.

Keeping this focus, we will involve gamification specialists, behavioral scientists, game designers, augmented reality specialists, and learning professionals to continuously ensure that our solution maintains an appealing, modern look and dynamics and, also, a high degree of custom-tailored educational influence on its users. Incorporating user feedback obtained in-software and from social media platforms is a must and it will be leveraged upon to further enhance our products.

Our target userbase has its majority being in the risk-tolerant segment of society. In case of an infectious disease emergency, an immediate benefit is the direct communication channel. As a result, our users will be less likely to fall for misinformation and will adhere mitigating regulations. 

We expose an interface much alike to what policymakers are looking at concurrently. We acknowledge the usefulness and importance of professional approaches in evaluating mitigation scenarios. Nevertheless, the potential added value of modeling carried out by thousands of non-experts have been readily found to be superior on some occasions, e.g. protein folding and design.

The gamified educational environment is currently in the development phase. 

Following the emergence of COVID-19 in Hungary, based on our continuous model-based forecasting to policymakers, we have readily created Flatten Forecasting, a cutting-edge framework encompassing the methodology and tools that are needed for realistic epidemiological modeling and forecasting on large scale. 

We cannot stress enough the importance of current, scientifically justified models providing the backbone of the gamified environment and, in that aspect, our solution has been tested and tried both in live and scientific settings. 

Nevertheless, the gamified environment being the principal output of our solution places us in the selected stage of development.

Developing a smartphone application, being either “just” a game or one with specialized educational focus, is definitely a complex but rather straightforward task. Nevertheless, we agree that there is a multitude of possibilities for innovation in each and every component.

Our assessment of novelty in this project highlights three areas:

• Unprecedented (in gamified solutions) modeling rigor resulting in an environment driven by realistic pandemic simulation. 

• Placement of the user in an augmented reality setting together with clear communication of the realistic modeling engine will greatly enhance user experience, inspiration and involvement. 

• We have high hopes in achieving a regular userbase of considerable size, based on both the popularity of readily existing games with epidemiological context and on witnessing that nowadays almost all private conversations touch the topic of the pandemic implying potential for high-level involvement. But it is not directly the size, traction, or market share is what excites us the most. It is with extreme curiosity and enthusiasm that we look forward to seeing, analyzing, and potentially learning from the joint modeling and mitigation efforts carried out by our users that is to witness distributed modeling leveraging human creativity in action!

We refer to our impact goals as an aswer for this question.

We have different impact criteria for the two components, though “download count” will be an important factor in evaluating the reach and success of both app-based products. 

Considering the real-time strategy game exposing epidemic management in augmented reality to the user, we expect to reach 100k downloads within the first 6 months following deployment (supported by an agile marketing campaign) and 200k within the first year. Exponential growth is a concept vital to epidemics modeling, hence, we are aware of the caveats of utilizing it in defining our milestones. Nevertheless, our market research of currently available games with epidemic context makes us set the ambitious lower limit goal of 1m downloads by the end of the 3rd year and 3m by the end of the 5th year with aspiration for a considerably larger number.

We do not expect such level of reach, measured in direct downloads, from the non-profit arm with a central focus on gamified education. We aspire to partner with NGOs to deliver our solution preinstalled. We have readily got in contact with Global Giving and they expressed their interest in connecting us with NGOs that can help. We expect to reach 10k deployments within the first year and 100k by the end of the fifth.

Our solution team comprises enthusiastic researches and professionals devoting part-time to this project:

Ferenc A. Bartha, Assistant Professor

Arpad Szoor, Assistant Professor

Zsolt Vizi, Assistant Professor

Peter Boldog, Research Fellow

Norbert Bogya, Research Fellow

Andras Lonzkor, Network and System Specialist Consultant

Tibor Szalay, Senior HR Project Manager

Ferenc, Zsolt, Peter, and Norbert are members of the Mathematical Disease Modeling and Epidemiological Analysis Task Force at the University of Szeged.

Ferenc, our team lead, was a coordinator of the DARPA project “Proteus” while working at Rice University, TX, USA. After returning to Hungary, he has been awarded multiple grants for young investigators. 

Arpad is a successful cancer researcher who brings a unique viewpoint into this STEM-oriented group. He worked at Texas Children’s Hospital for 2 years and is involved in impactful medical research projects. After returning to Hungary in 2016, he has received several young investigator awards. 

Zsolt obtained his PhD working in epidemics modeling then became an AI Specialist at Bosch before returning to academia.

Peter is finishing his PhD in epidemics modeling and has obtained degrees in physics and biology. He is also a practitioning magician and our creative engine.

Tibor is an experienced project manager who is brilliantly coordinating this pile of researchers - not a simple task!

Andras is the master developer and IT generalist who has proven his skills in several projects. 

Norbert is our jolly joker, his enthusiasm for teaching and modeling makes him involved in all aspects of the project.

We have been socialized in an academic environment that is built on diversity and equity, hence, these are core values that we all share.

Obtaining initial funding is but the first step for such projects as ours. The real difficulty comes while scaling up to be accessible in distant geographical regions. Successful participation on this challenge would directly pave part of this road by the acquired visibility and, more importantly, by potential partnership with members of the Solve community.

We are first and foremost researchers, teachers, and IT professionals. We are confident in the potential benefits of our solution and we are clear on the technical path we need to follow to make it a reality.

We have limited experience in financing such early-stage ventures and, more importantly, we have no expertise in marketing. We primarily seek mentorship in these two areas but are open for collaboration regarding other aspects of our project as well.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: The BMGF has demonstrated on multiple occasions its dedication to enhancing healthcare and addressing the challenge posed by COVID-19. Should our project arouse their interest, we could directly connect with their vast network of NGOs for enabling expedite deployment of our solution in developing regions.

The United States with its vast economy is one of the top countries on any list when it comes to per capita smartphone usage and video gaming. We assess the US to be a natural early deployment area for our solution with potential for gaining traction.

Upon being awarded, we will use the RWJF Prize for increasing our reach within the US.

Data science is not just a buzzword for this project, the parametrization of epidemics models heavily relies on processing a multitude of information, hence, it is a core building block of our solution.

We'd devote funding from PJMcG for our modeling engine development efforts.