CaT Pin

Full description

Background
The CaT Pin (Conversation as Therapy) is a discreet, low-cost wearable to monitor loneliness. In the form of a lapel pin or brooch, the device detects the presence or absence of conversation. When the wearer drops below a certain number of words/hour a text message is sent to a loved one or volunteer health care worker, providing a nudge to make a phone call or drop around for a conversation. Loneliness has significant consequences to health including disrupted sleep, elevated blood pressure, increases in cortisol, increased depression and heart disease and for ‘extreme loneliness' a 27% increase in mortality.

Contribution
Evolving through deep collaboration between design, engineering and healthcare, the form of the CaT Pin is customised to the aesthetics of the wearer by imprinting its surface with cherished jewellery, medals or textiles. While the importance of word count in language acquisition, IQ and autism in children is well recognised, little work has been done on the use of word count as a proxy for loneliness in the elderly. The CaT Pin supports further research activities into loneliness assessment and contributes to a dataset on interaction rates for our ageing population.

Significance
The CaT Pin won the 2018 Telstra Ageing Well Design Challenge providing funding to coalesce a team to address the complex issue of loneliness detection and mitigation. The CaT Pin is at functioning prototype stage and was presented to the 2019 Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health as an example of resilience enabling technology. It was exhibited as part of Agency by Design: Expressive Design for Disability at Artisan Gallery, Queensland’s premier gallery for design and part of the Australian Craft and Design Centres Network, a group of peak organisations from all states and territories including Craft Victoria and Australian Tapestry Workshop. CaT Pin has received significant press; it was featured on ABC News, Channel 7 News, 3AW and ABC Radio.