Artem Lyozin, a graduate of the UFuture Talents 2020 launched psychological support chatbot. He and Iryna Shatalova won the grant for the project at the COVID Challenge Hackathon. They applied knowledge and skills acquired at the program for pitching, promotion, and search for partners. 

- Mental well-being is critical for team morale. When people are in good mental shape they perform better, enjoy good health, and do not suffer from the negative side effects. Our product is aimed to make mental well-being accessible for most people, help them to handle difficulties, and promote psychological services, Artem tells about the chatbot concept. 

The team is improving the product based on the collected feedback. Due to the grant, they hired a psychologist. 

- We started together with Iryna Shatalova. Later, after we won, IT experts joined our team. But we understood that we needed a psychologist and hired a person. He developed the methodology. It took us a year. Then the other psychologist validated the data. We have to move slowly as we want our product to be safe for users, Artem comments. 

- In most cases, the neural networks approach is applied. However, it can only provide a probability. That’s why we decided on algorithms and cognitive psychology. Naturally, our chatbot needs fine-tuning. The project is delivered in short iterations. Talking to a human psychologist option is being developed, Artem explains.

He believes that due to his participation in the UFuture Talents he better understands how to market. Artem is applying his new marketing skills and knowledge at this stage of the project. 

- We played Management Game as a part of the program. We practiced teamwork and dealing with competition. It is critical now for product promotion. The team is expanding to implement daring ambitions. Entering English-speaking markets is one area and commercialization of the product is another one.