Describe any restrictions or regulations regarding Healthcare/RX/Pharma communications in your country/region including:

In November 2018, the government decided to ease the regulations for staffing standards of childcare staff. Some concern that safety and the quality of child care might decline in the future. Many civil society groups are conducting signature-collecting campaigns to maintain the standards.

Describe the target audience and why your work is relevant to them.

Children are not aware of their own stress and if care-workers ask them, they cannot answer their condition easily. Therefore, we applied the function of stress check in their daily attendance routine. Focusing on the habit of "replying" at the time of attendance, we created a natural flow of experience.

Background

As the number of double-income households increases, places for children outside of school becomes increasingly necessary. But, there is not enough space for children to stay after school "safely and securely". Parents are at work, and the manpower of after-school care is insufficient. Care-workers are extremely busy just by checking their students' attendance. Moreover, in terms of child care, the serious problem is that children's stress is difficult to discern. We don’t know if a child is undergoing mental stress only by looking at their faces. Each of them has different ways of expressing their stress. If children's stress is overlooked, bullying or abuse can be missed, and in the worst case, it can lead to a tragic result. How can we find the silent stress of children while supporting the careworker's working environment?

Describe the creative idea

We have developed an app to automate attendance checking. Using face and speech recognition technology, it automatically confirms children's arrival, and reduces the burden on the instructor. In addition, this app has another function; checking the silent SOS of children. It records them saying "I'm here" and sends it to the cloud network. Then, the system analyzes the characteristics of their voice. With its original algorithm based on tens of thousands of voice data samples, it judges the child's state of emotion, pleasure, and mood in real time. Scores are recorded day by day for each child, and care-workers are informed of depressed children with a warning sign. This data can be used as an indicator to talk to children and as well as a catalyst for daily communication. It could also lead to an early detection of abuse and bullying.

Describe the strategy

We utilized the artificial intelligence "Empath", which analyzes human emotion from speech. By providing free APIs, Empath receives voice data samples and presents them to multiple evaluators. Samples that gain similar results are used as the training data. This is because a voice that recalls a similar emotion from a group of people is likely to be the representation of a specific emotion. Based on machine learning with this unique algorithm, we analyzed the speed and intonation of recorded voice data and estimated emotions in real time. We visualized the four emotions of delight, calm, anger and sorrow, and the value of "energy". This indicator was also used to monitor victims and volunteers after the 3/11 Tohoku earthquake.

Describe the execution

Children are not aware of their own stress and if care-workers ask them, they cannot answer their condition easily. Therefore, we applied the function of stress check in their daily attendance routine. Focusing on the habit of "replying" at the time of attendance, we created a natural flow of experience for stress checking. Ways of expressing stress is different in each child, and could only be estimated by the instructor's intuition and experience. Therefore, we divided children's mental state into four emotional parameters and a comprehensive energy level, so any instructor can easily check children's stress regardless of their experience. The user-friendly design and function can reduce barriers of installment. The game-like interface is also designed to let children check their stress as if they are playing a game.

List the results

In November 2018, the government decided to ease the regulations for staffing standards of childcare staff. Some concern that safety and the quality of child care might decline in the future. Many civil society groups are conducting signature-collecting campaigns to maintain the standards. Under these circumstances, Welcome Checker not only supports the work of the care-workers, but also visualizes children's stress in a way that everyone could see, and prevents abuses and bullying. It will help both care-workers and children. As a result, it will also help their parents. Furthermore, it will contribute to create the brand image of NPO Carole, which has been "working to ensure the security and sefety of children consistently". We are improving the system so that we can introduce the app to various facilities, starting with classrooms operated by Carole.