TURNING SOCIAL MEDIA TIME INTO EXERCISE FOR PARKINSON’S SYMPTOMS.
THE PROBLEM
According to World Health Organization, 8.5 million people are affected by Parkinson’s disease. An early symptom is Facial Masking or Hypomimia. Up to 89% of patients experience facial and speech impairments—a condition where they can no longer express their emotions.
This cruel condition can negatively impact their social interactions and relationships, leading to feelings of isolation, loneliness, and depression, which can have significant consequences on their overall well-being and quality of life.
A daily 45-minute facial exercise routine can significantly improve symptoms, but only 3% of patients follow it. Not only is it tiring and frustrating, it’s tough to watch yourself in the mirror when your face no longer follows your heart.
“It is really hard to stand in front of a mirror for 45 minutes a day, seeing what this disease is doing to me.”
Sebastián Porta, Diagnosed with Parkinson’s 6 years ago.
THE INSIGHT
Globally, people spend a daily average of 2.5 hours browsing on social media.
That’s 2.5 hours that Parkinson's patients could use to improve their facial symptoms.
And Latin America is one of the regions with the highest rates of daily social media usage, holding 4 out of the top 10 global countries, making it the perfect place to help.
DAILY SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE BY COUNTRY | 2023
THE IDEA
Scrolling Therapy is an innovative mobile application that uses facial recognition to browse the social media feed. We identified patients' most important facial exercises-smiling, raising eyebrows, frowning-and converted them into browsing actions. Simply by moving their faces patients could like, play, scroll up and down, and more.
HOW IT WORKS
Using an open-source AI platform, the app leverages the built-in camera to recognize user’s facial expressions and translate them into browsing actions.
We applied the 5 most important facial exercises into the app, turning a smile into a like, a sad face into play, a surprised face into scroll down, a disgust face into scrolling up, and an angry face into swipe.
“What makes us human is our ability to show our emotions. It’s our most beloved gift.”
Marcia Dias, diagnosed with Parkinson’s 15 years ago.
THE RESULTS
