BipBeep: Bipolar Personal Assistant

One stop solution to reduce suicidal rates from people with bipolar by utilizing IoT to control and monitor their mood.

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a mental illness that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, concentration, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks (NIMH, 2022). Globally, an estimated 46 million people are diagnosed with this condition (Our World in Data, 2018). Indonesia has no official data on how many people live with BD. However, estimates put the prevalence between 1–8% of the general population, and nearly 45% of affected people are not appropriately diagnosed (Jakarta Post, 2020).

Out of all mood disorders, those diagnosed with BD have the highest probability of being classified with severe impairments (Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005). Not only that, of all affective patients presenting with a major depressive episode at one point in their illness, bipolar disorder also carries the highest suicide rate (Cassidy, 2011). Approximately one-third to one-half of BD patients attempt suicide at least once in their lifetime, and 15–20% of the population die due to suicide (Gonda et al., 2012). 

Medication and psychotherapy are usually combined to treat people with BD (NIMH, 2022). While medications like mood stabilizers and antidepressants can help prevent severe mood episodes, the therapy can help them understand how to differentiate between accurate thoughts and those generated by their condition. It is also necessary to gain insights into one’s patterns and moods and to gain awareness of when one becomes symptomatic since the depressive and dysphoric-agitated mixed phases of BD, particularly following repeated episodes of severe depression, is mostly life-threatening (Tondo et al., 2003). However, so far, there is a lack of monitoring options in BD (Stautland et al., 2022). 

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) links the central and cardiovascular systems. The ANS activity and function are altered and dysregulated in people with BD (Jepsen et al., 2017). Many studies have proven that Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a validated measure of balance in the activity of the ANS (Jepsen et al., 2017) and is one of the promising biomarker candidates for monitoring shifts in mood state for people with BD (Stautland et al., 2022). Unfortunately, there is currently limited technology that allows us to monitor HRV in people with BD. 

Therefore, the problem we are trying to solve is how we might help people with bipolar to manage and monitor their mood shifts so that they could get the right treatment and suicide could be prevented.

BipBeep combines a wearable device and a mobile application system that uses machine learning technology. 

The wearable device has sensors that record changes in Heart Rate Variability (HRV). The recorded information will later be processed and displayed on the mobile application. 

BipBeep mobile application will learn someone’s mood shift patterns using machine learning technology and assist the person in going through them. For example, when a person with BD enters a depressed state, BipBeep will show recommendations to help lift their mood. It also has a voice assistant company during hard times. 

The mobile application can also be helpful as a sharing platform for the BD community, where they can meet other people with BD and share their therapy experiences. During critical conditions, for example, when a person is suicidal, or even worse, has attempted suicide, the BipBeep mobile application will send an emergency message automatically to their support systems so that their support system can perform first-aid to save them from any critical situations.

Our solution, BeepBip, serves people with Bipolar Disorder (BD) and their support systems, including friends, family, and professional helpers.

For people with BD, this system will help them track their mood shifts without manually inputting any changes, which can be very bothersome during a low mood state. This information is beneficial to improve the quality of therapy they currently have. Also, understanding their mood shift will help with the frustration caused by sudden changes in mood and behavior. 

Considering that people with BD are usually misdiagnosed, having their mood shifts recorded accurately will also help them provide the needed information for the professional helpers to be able to help them better. 

For the people who are involved as a support system for people with BD, this system will help them understand the mood shift better. Also, it will help to ease their anxiety about the possibility of bad things happening to their loved ones.

Most importantly, this system will help prevent the worst possibility that a person with BD might experience, which is suicide.

One of our team members, Iklima, lost her best friend to suicide last year. Her friend was diagnosed with BD and struggled for three years before committing suicide. It was a horrible experience, and she did not want anyone else to go through it. Besides that, she has been dealing with different mental health issues and wants to provide a better service to ease the battle other people have been going through. Those experiences will be meaningful information to understand people with bipolar struggles and needs.

The other two, as Information System & Technology students, Grace and Chintya see a huge potential in Technology. They have a background in IoT, Mobile Applications, and basic Machine Learning that can be a foundation to develop the solution. Moreover, we learn to think using system design that helps us to understand people with bipolar needs and implement it using our technical knowledge.

We have personally asked several people with BD to understand their needs, especially during critical conditions. However, we need more information to make our system work efficiently. 

We have this one big online platform that spreads awareness about bipolar in Indonesia, namely bipolarcare.indonesia, on Instagram. We plan to reach out to them, conduct a survey, and engage with the community.

We also have experience volunteering for a mental health community. Though it was not specifically for BD, it gave us a glimpse of the challenges of providing mental health services in Indonesia, including the stigma and limited access to healthcare. Therefore, we will consider those two aspects in providing our service to the BD community.

BipBeep provides a one-stop solution for people with bipolar. It integrates all aspects that are needed by people with bipolar such as mood management, consultation, discussion, and emergency. This could reduce the probability of people with bipolar to do suicide. As we know that bipolar can’t be cured, BipBeep will be the perfect complementary tool for people with bipolar during the treatment.

There are 2 types of users, which are people with bipolar and their support system. For people with bipolar, BipBeep is used to help them control their mood. As the future impact, BipBeep will reduce their intention to suicide and helps calm them down so that they can mingle with normal people better. For the support system such as their parents, relation, and professionals, BipBeep will help them monitor the improvement of people with bipolar. Hence, they could avoid the worst possibility.

The main objective of BipBeep is to help people with bipolar to have a better life. The first step that will be implemented next year is to reduce the suicide rate among people with bipolar, increase awareness about bipolar disorder, and encourage people in the bipolar community.

To achieve the first goal, reducing the suicide rate among people with bipolar, BipBeep will provide first aid solutions to avoid suicide through BipBeep core feature. Not only that, in the future BipBeep will establish cooperation with experts so that they could instantly give first aid to people with bipolar. As a result, we could cut up to 10% suicide rate.

The second goal, increasing awareness about the bipolar disorder will be done through spreading awareness in BipBeep mobile application and social media. Per next year, BipBeep is targeting to reach 30+ bipolar communities to spread awareness together that approximately will reach ~27M people. 

One of the results of increasing awareness about bipolar is society's intention to support people with bipolar. Therefore, BipBeep planned to create crowdfunding to facilitate them.

BipBeep core technology are IoT, Machine Learning, and Mobile Applications. BipBeep consists of 2 end products which are a mobile application and a wearable sensor to detect HRV (Heart Rate Variability).

The IoT technology will be used to get people with bipolar’s HRV and send it to the mobile application. One of the sensors is BVP Sensor, a sensor to read HRV. The result will be sent to BipBeep system to be processed and displayed on BipBeep mobile application.

By the time, BipBeep will get a lot of data. Therefore, BipBeep will have the capability to discover the mood swing pattern of people with bipolar. Here’s where Machine Learning will take part to understand and optimize the pattern.

Last but not least, to simplify the user in using BipBeep, we will implement the software in the form of mobile application. BipBeep will use a cross-platform framework such as Flutter to enable people with disorders to access BipBeep without worrying about their operating system.

BipBeep hasn’t been implemented. Therefore, there’s no exact number that BipBeep currently serves. However, we still believe that BipBeep could meaningfully affects a lot of people. 

In 2023, there are estimated 150k people with bipolar in Indonesia. With our solution, we will not only help ~150k people with bipolar but also their support systems. By targeting only 30% of people with bipolar in Indonesia, we’ll affect ~45k people. If each people with bipolar have a minimum of 1 support system, we’ll affect ~45k more people. So, in total, we will serve ~90k people in our first year. With BipBeep’s capability, we are sure that BipBeep could serve much more people in the future.

BipBeep faces 2 main barriers which are access and culture. Most people with bipolar tend to hide their disorder which makes it harder for people to help them. Not only that, there are still a limited number of communities to access people with bipolar. To overcome this barrier, BipBeep will establish cooperation with professionals first to engage people with bipolar.

From the cultural side, people in Indonesia have a negative sentiment to the people with bipolar. Some of them is not aware with the dangerous of bipolar disorder. Therefore, we should increase society’s awareness and educate them first.

Bipbeep will form partnerships with hospitals, clinics, and telehealth to provide medical treatment to people with bipolar such as wearables sales and consultation with the doctors. Consultation will be conducted offline through online booking or online through telehealth provided in the mobile application. Revenue streams will be from hardware sales, consultation fees, and subscription fees for hardware and application maintenance. Besides revenue streams, Bipbeep will raise investment and donations from venture capitalists and the bipolar community.