Digest #6 — Building technology in the Open
Project Sukoon: India's Digital Public Infrastructure for mhTech
👋 Hi there! I’m Harshali and you’re reading the weekly digest on the mental health tech economy.
Previously, I’ve written about mhTech B2C and B2B products built privately for profit. Today I dive into building open, not-for-profit tech repositories in mhTech.
Today’s digest in a nutshell:
The India mH stack — Project Sukoon
Digital Public Infrastructure
Solutions for mental health contexts
Leveraging artificial intelligence
What to expect from Project Sukoon?
Why is building in the open important?
Building the India mhTech stack
I struggle with putting myself out there on the internet so when algorithms help find shared interests its digital serendipity! In the most Bangalorean way of making friends, I met Tanisha Sheth and Shashwat Shukla via Twitter.
What is Project Sukoon?
Tanisha and Shashwat are a part of a volunteer led publicly built technology initiative called Project Sukoon, supported by People+ai, a Bangalore based non-profit.
Project Sukoon is a Digital Public Infrastructure initiative for creating solutions in various mental health contexts that leverage artificial intelligence
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)
The UNDP defines DPI as:
networked open technology standards that are built for public interest
enabling governance and
a community of innovative and competitive market players working to drive innovation, especially across public programmes.
Simply put, DPI is like a universal power outlet that allows any device to plug in and get going. DPI provides a common digital foundation that various services and applications can build upon, making it easier for everyone to access and use them at a large scale. An example is the India Stack for digital payments. Here's further reading on DPI.
The key principles of DPI are:
Open Source — software for which the original source code is made freely available, open for modification, and redistribution
Interoperability — the ability of programs to exchange information with each other and other programs in a larger system
The key principles allow for building truly large scale solutions and changing the paradigm of a service - like going from a cash heavy to truly cashless economy.
Creating solutions in the mental health contexts
Mental health tech products can be built for various people and use-cases e.g. for clients, providers, educators. Each persona comes with their own nuances - their roles, responsibilities, and contributions to the larger picture of the mH industry.
Which means products must be built for varying contexts. Examples of contexts are early intervention, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, training, education, research, policy, governance.
The more contexts get discovered and listed, the wider the spectrum of mH practise covered, the wider the net for creating solutions.
Leveraging Artificial Intelligence
And here the prodigal term enters the conversation.
AI in mental health is often perceived as a threat providers, as a replacement even. However, a job who’s inherent requirement is having a human heart and brain specialised in healing - could it ever truly be replaced by a machine?
In any industry there are tasks that a human brain cannot sustainably perform. Reading thousands of prescriptions, analysing hundreds of thousands of hours of conversations, directing the entire population of a country to find care in a secure manner — repetitive, tedious, computation heavy jobs. These are best poised to be performed by machines.
What to expect from Project Sukoon?
An initiative like Sukoon is on a long, winding journey. What’s in it for everyone - you might ask?
For technologists and creatives
If you you play a role any role in a tech team - a designer, an animator, a copy writer, an engineer - or you are a founder setting out to build your own products, the outcomes of Project Sukoon will be a starting point for you. You’ll find:
Culturally adapted AI models for mental health
Standardised APIs for accessing mental health resources and insights
Robust, scalable mental health DPI and assets
For policy-makers and researchers
If you read, write, interview, research, and report on the healthcare space, you’ll find knowledge repositories to build your work on.
Data for informed decision making in mental health policy and resource allocation
For mental health service providers
If you come from a clinical background and have a therapy practise, you’ll find a structure to navigate the chaos of mental health intersecting with tech.
Frameworks and principles for ethical application of AI in mental health
Guardrails for privacy, security, confidentiality, and preventing bias in technology works in mental health
For care seekers
And finally, if you are simply seeking mental healthcare you might never directly interact with Project Sukoon. Instead, you might be the beneficiary of the foundation set up by the project, upon which services and products are built that bring you access to care right at your fingertips.
Why is building in the open so important?
This article from the first time I looked up ‘Open Source’ in 2019 captures it beautifully:
The balance of free labor and corporate growth should be respected if we want technology to keep moving forward. Open-source software does what it says on the tin—the source code of a piece of software is kept open and free to download, modify and incorporate into third party projects, which helps to improve the software itself over time.
Open Source allows for open innovation and access to digital infrastructure for everyone. Does it mean whatever is built is free? Not at all. Does it mean it can be built upon by anyone? Hell yes!
Open Source and DPI is to technological growth what public transport is to transit, public health is to wellbeing, and public education is to literacy. It reaches millions!
If you’d like to get in touch with Project Sukoon or volunteer, reach out to them here or simply reply to this email and I’ll introduce you to the right people.
Big thanks to Tanisha Sheth, Shashwat Shukla, Luv Singh, and the team at Project Sukoon for volunteering support for this digest!
If you enjoyed this read consider subscribing or sharing it with a friend who is interested in mhTech!
Do you have thoughts/ feelings/ questions/ ideas? Lets have a 15 min video chat. 💌
Until next time,
Harshali