The Eurapco Partners have carried out a Mental Wellbeing Challenge and developed Mindmirror, an app to support customers in measuring and managing their state of mind to improve their mental well-being.
Mental disorders are a fast-growing problem in Europe. Following the WHO, each year, 25% of the population suffers from depression or anxiety, about 50% of major depressions are untreated, and up to 50% of sick leaves are due to the above-mentioned illness.
Moreover, neuropsychiatric disorders represent 26% of the burden of disease in EU countries.These disorders account for up to 40% of years lived with disability, with depression as the main cause. And this situation raises the costs of mood disorders and anxiety in the EU to about €170 billion per year.
How did the project come to be?
The Eurapco Partners wanted to explore the topic of mental well-being further as a way of preventing mental illness. The participating Health Group partners have decided to focus on exploring how we can support customers in measuring and managing their state of mind to improve their mental well-being.
To manage the state of mind different techniques and solutions must be explored to learn which are the most effective. In addition, it is important to get a better understanding of mental well-being from a customer’s point of view. Setting-up small experiments combined with solid customer research should provide good insights and learnings and should guide the partners in developing appealing propositions for their customers.
What is the project’s aim?
The objective of the Mental Wellbeing Challenge is to explore different solutions that can measure and manage your state of mind. Together, the Health Group, the Innovation Group, and the Eurapco Lab, have executed a series of ideation workshops to narrow the focus from general mental health to mental well-being, and more specifically the mental State of Mind. The participating partners also created an overview of currently available customer research insights at partner companies and conducted a market scan towards potential solutions in the mental health space.
What are the phases of the project?
The project consists of three phases:
1. Development phase: : It aims to design and develop an app, a so-called Minimum Viable Product (MVP), that allows users to measure their mental state using speech, or heart rhythm variation (HRV) via a smartwatch and to manage it using breathing exercises or listing to a specific Spotify playlist.
2. Test phase: It has recently started and has a duration of 12 weeks. During this phase, the app will be tested in various settings with up to 200 users from an Achmea focus group. In addition, Länsförsäkringar, Covea, and Union participate with 5-10 internal (employees) test users.
3. Evaluation phase: In the last phase, and based on the customer feedback and research, the app and proof-of-concept will be evaluated providing Eurapco partners with new valuable learnings and insights.
How does the app work?
The app is called MindMirror and was developed by Maaind in close collaboration with Achmea. It allows users to measure their state of mind and its variation over time by speech analysis or heart rate variability analysis data from connected wearables. As a result, users will be able to categorize their state of mind as Mellow, Flow or GoGoGo.
Furthermore, MindMirror offers suggestions, breathing exercises, playing sounds, or the possibility to listen to a specific playlist to move from one state of mind to another. The effect of these suggestions will be visible on a screen, showing the mental state before and after.
How do we move forward from here?
Currently, MindMirror is being tested by Achmea’s customer test group as well as by colleagues from Eurapco Partners. Customer research and in-app analytics will allow us to evaluate the MVP and will give us directions to further iterate and develop the MVP. As the intellectual property can be used by other Eurapco Partners, it is possible that the next iteration and proof-of-concept will be executed with other of our Partners.
Source: WHO Europe. Depression in Europe: facts and figures.
