JoyFuel - Unleash your Joy

JoyFuel helps people to improve their skills to manage Stress & Anxiety Desease via Body & Mind self-training.

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Inspiration

I'm Silvia, a 37 years old Psychotherapist and 7 years ago I discovered I had a tumor. This fact, in my 30 years old head, generated a lot of anxiety and fear of being sick. At that time I was an HR Consultant, Trainer & Business Coach and I decided to specialize to also become a psychotherapist just to help people who suffer from anxiety disorders and the stress that generates managing a disease, your own or a loved one.

How Big is the problem?

30% of European People have suffered Anxiety (Craske, MG; Stein, MB - 2016 - "Anxiety") so it affects more than 220 millions people in EU and now, after lockdown and the Covid Pandemia, the prevalence rate for anxiety rises up to 44.7% (A brief mental health screener for COVID-19 related anxiety )... Anxiety is a big issue to be faced now!

What it does

JoyFuel make psychology and psychotherapy within everyone's reach, understandable and accessible to as many people as possible to help them feeling better, day after day!

JoyFuel is an online platform (accessible via mobile and pc) to help people improving their skills to manage Stress and Anxiety. They can rely on digital contents and real psychotherapists.

The digital content is based on a new a model of intervention focused on a two-dimensional approach: Body&Mind. The users learns how to:

  • be aware of their own level of stress/anxiety;
  • manage their own anxious thoughts and body-reactions to stressful events (eg the Covid19 emergency);
  • develop different and more functional strategies to manage stressful events with less anxiety;
  • build a better self-confidence and have a more positive and well supported lifelong journey.

JoyFuel provides a mix of self and assisted learning activities:

  • webinar, masterclass and video-training programs for self learning held by specialist doctors and psychotherapists;
  • digital psychological support meetings (both individual and group) with psychotherapists;
  • daily support with tips and news with small exercises to maintain focusing and motivation;
  • weekly programs of digital live classes of yoga, mindfulness practices and group meditations.

Our method/solution is a mix of integrable actions, not just one!

Our competitors (eg Headspace or Calm) only suggest "meditation", or "yoga", or "psychotherapy". JoyFuel has an unique approach giving access to different contents and exercises, tailored on the person needs. The psychological approach, that we promote and distinguishes us from competitors, is the psychotherapy approach of Bioenergetic Analysis (search for “IIBA Bioenergetic Analysis” if you want to look something in details): a more bodily based approach than mental (it differentiates JoyFuel from cognitive approach, or CBT or mindfulness).

JoyFuel provides a psychological support but it's not a substitute for face-to-face psychotherapy.

How we built it

During this Hackathon we analysed the process and made it more scalable defining the best balance between digital and live contents.

We build a “tailoring strategy” in order to ensure each user with a personalized experience.

We begin the production of the JoyFuel portal and aggregate all our services in one place.

Our team is composed by:

  • Silvia - CEO and Psychotherapist;
  • Riccardo - Process engineer;
  • Stefano - Developer;
  • Giovanni - Product manager.

Challenges we ran into

Silvia has studied and integrated different psychological, mental and bodily techniques that lower stress and anxiety levels and she developed a model of intervention focused on a two-dimensional approach: Mind&Body. A method supported by the Nobel Prize E. Blackburn.

But she wanted to help more people, and to achieve this we begin this adventure together creating this team and building JoyFuel!

We started from my previous digital products: an online course called "BastaAnsia" (that means "StopAnxiety") which aims to combine self learning (digital course) with psychological support in distant small groups. We improve it transforming a personal approach to a replicable model and sustainable method.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Before starting the development of our platform JoyFuel, we validated the users needs and our business model. These are our results:

On these platforms we disseminated stress management techniques and anxiety management and reduction strategies.

What we learned

In these three days of hard work we:

  • Learned how to apply the lean methodology to understand the needs of our reference market, which in this case has provided us with a clear request to build a portal available 24 hours a day to have ad hoc paths and constant psychological support to manage stress and anxiety.
  • Saw the great engagement of people who landed live on the portal on Sunday morning at 10.30 a.m. We understood that there is a real need for concrete tools and instruments from a market ready to use them.
  • Defined a long term strategy to delight the community on a daily basis with content that keeps them engaged, active and motivated in their process of growth or difficulty management.

Impact on society

During the Covid emergency this online support space was fundamental to offer concrete help to 105 people, isolated at home, Covid19 positive and not, as they could continue to have psychological support, inspirational phrases, webinars and Live, exercises and practices to keep their anxiety level low or to have support in cases of increased stress.

When this emergency will be ended, JoyFuel will continue to help people. We aim to provide every EU citizen (and even world citizen) with an effective “companion” to fight and manage her/his anxiety. The results we got so far are extremely encouraging. The messages of our patients and their Joy is the best reward for our work.

Business Model

JoyFuel has 2 Business-lines:

  • A Freemium model for user -> "Free access" to most of the contents and “Premium Access” to specific contents or individual support;
  • We offer a Membership plan for professional psychotherapists to join JoyFuel patients network.

What's next for JoyFuel

  • The alfa version of the portal is already available;
  • The beta version will be ready by the end of this month;
  • On this Sunday we delivered a LIVE EVENT to get as many people on the beta platform as possible;
  • In May 2020 we will launch the platform in Italy and begin the translation in English;
  • By October 2020 all the contents will be translated and the expansion in Europe will begin;
  • In 2021 we will have enough data to change our algorithm-based tailoring to an AI-based.
  • Less anxiety means a more happy and sustainable society.

Thanks to this amazing team of engineers, developers, marketers and psychologists we will fight back anxiety with "JoyFuel - Unleash your Joy".

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