Tea and Tech with HackMentalHealth London
Last night I had the absolute pleasure of attending another event by the fresh-faced London chapter of HackMentalHealth. We met at Kamet’s Central London office for an evening of “Tea and Tech”, which was exactly what it sounds like. The tech part took the form of a “mini-ideathon”, which was again, I think, exactly what it sounds like. The idea was to devise and then pitch ideas to solve a particular problem — just like a hackathon, but focusing on the idea alone.
After a few minutes of chit-chat over some tea (fruity, of course*), we split into groups and came up with ideas for digital tools for some plausible hypothetical problems. We were then to pitch what we’d come up with to the rest of the room, and face questions on the implications and practicalities. We each clarified what the business model would be, and how we would take our proposed products to market. The whole-room discussions were a good chance to consider ethical issues we hadn’t quite ironed out, such as how to balance confidentiality with a shared duty of care.
Our group was tasked with somehow improving the life of an imaginary university student who was smoking cannabis to manage his anxiety, but was unable to tell anyone apart from his counsellor. We fleshed out the specifics of a nationwide platform for students, with freely accessible psychoeducation information, and group and individual sessions of counselling and CBT-like therapies. Universities would fund this, once its worth was demonstrated, with the aim of measurably increasing students’ mental wellbeing and improving their satisfaction. One ethical stumbling block was how it would manage a student disappearing from the platform — it would share in the university’s duty of care, but would also have to maintain an appropriate degree of confidentiality.
Another team was tasked with helping a fictitious young woman overwhelmed by her high pressure job. They were able to build on ideas shared at the first HMH London event, including the tactics employed by the Managing Director at Softwire. Inevitably we ended up discussing how corporations (and academic institutions) would benefit from changes in culture, and how we might help bring that about.
This was a format I hadn’t tried before, and I loved how it was distillation of the hackathon process. Generating a clear product proposal in under an hour, with people with a wide range of backgrounds, then presenting in a supportive and enthused forum, is really stimulating. It’s a great exercise in thinking together and making use of a variety of sets of knowledge and skills. It also forces you to think realistically about everything beside the tool itself, which it’s easy to overlook.
I’m really looking forward to the next HackMentalHealth London event, especially if it’s another Tea and Tech Mini-Ideathon.
* the unifying theme was literally sleep quality, so no caffeine after 6!
