Rush for Apps targeting health and wellbeing

The global pandemic has brought a surge in people seeking help for their emotional wellbeing, with long waiting lists for psychologists and other support services – with reports of some even having to turn away people seeking help.

Frontline workers dealing with Covid-19 are struggling daily. And young people in particular are suffering with the stresses of studying from home, a lack of social contact with friends and extended families, and worry about how the virus might affect them.

It’s little wonder then that there are a number of new apps being launched and developed targeting emotional health and wellness during the pandemic.

The Black Dog Institute launched The Essential Network app to help frontline workers cope during Covid-19.

The Zombie Thoughts app to help primary school students deal with anxiety – while learning how to create their own app – is now being introduced into NSW schools.

And another new app will help parents across Australia better understand the emotional and social development of their children aged 0-12.

All these apps were created on Cogniss, a no-code app creation platform that makes it possible for anyone to create an app – with no need for software development or design skills.

Anyone who has the subject matter can build an entire app, picking from a range of user experience elements and sophisticated features including inbuilt social networks, gamified rewards systems and artificial intelligence that maximise user engagement, learning and behaviour change.

Cogniss is used by corporate, government, university, and not-for-profit customers including the Black Dog Institute, Raising Children Network and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.

Other recent wellness apps include:

• an app to help medical students avoid burnout;
• multiple problem gambling interventions;
• university studies into cognitive impairment in the elderly;
• yoga programs

Among the apps is an innovative, interactive “choose your own adventure”-style app to help children cope with anxiety amid the Covid-19 pandemic. It was developed alongside Riverside National Theatre of Parramatta’s Zombie Thoughts stage play written around a 9-year-old boy’s experiences with anxiety.

The app will help children build resilience against the anxiety and stresses of Covid-19 lockdowns, using avatars in a video game to help children understand their feelings and learn various coping techniques.

The Zombie Thoughts app is being launched as a teaching resource, bundled with access to the Cogniss platform and the “Choose Your Own Adventure” app template, so that school children can create and publish their own apps.

“It is a fantastic way for a teacher to address anxiety in a non-threatening way and the use of avatars lets children with anxiety engage without giving themselves away,” Riverside National Theatre of Parramatta executive producer Joanne Kee said.

“Anxiety is a real issue, I would say every kid if they have not got anxiety themselves, they know someone who has,” Ms Kee said.

“We knew we wanted to do something like the app, but we could never have done it without Cogniss – we are a theatre company,” Ms Kee said. “The Cogniss platform empowered us to create the app, despite our team having no previous app development or programming experience – and the great thing is now we have a template we can use for other shows.”

CEO Leon Young founded Cogniss out of frustration over how expensive and time-consuming it was to custom build apps.

His award-winning agency 2and2 had been producing learning solutions for global corporate, government, university and not-for-profit customers – but those custom solutions were expensive and he realised there had to be a better way.

Cogniss offers a single no-code app-building platform, designed with input from neuroscientists and neuropsychologists, to deliver best-in-class human transformation technology.

“With Cogniss an app that takes an agency months to build and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars can be built in days or weeks with no big upfront costs and just a low monthly fee,” he said.

“We even have a plan that allows first version products to be built and tested before commercial use for free.

“Cogniss gives anyone the opportunity to create an app that drives long-lasting learning, health and lifestyle outcomes. It is really inspiring to see it being used by all different organisations to deliver real world positive outcomes.”