The Journey of an Idea - Smart Light Therapy with Solis

The WHT Enterprise Challenge is an opportunity for Scholars to put their skills to work to make a positive change in the world. Combining mentoring and teamwork, the Challenge is designed to guide teams of Scholars through the early stages of developing an enterprising idea into effective action. Many WHT alumni go on to develop their own business or social enterprise.

A smart light box integrated with its own mobile app that allows tracking of light therapy sessions and suggests activities to improve mood and mental health. This is Solis, the companion that helps you take control of your mood and mental health. The innovation in mental healthcare that gives light therapy its Peloton moment.

The Foundation

Solis’ journey began almost a year ago, with the first WHT Enterprise Challenge workshop at Harris Manchester College in September 2019. The Enterprise Challenge took off with tables, walls, whiteboards and any other free space in the room getting filled with coloured post-its containing problems, solutions and technologies. After several rounds of brainstorming, making posters and pitching ideas, ‘WeCare’ was born. WeCare was ideated to be the ‘Uber of care services’, be it childcare, elderly care, pet care or even plant care. The objective was to ameliorate the lives of unpaid care-workers and working women. Over the next three months, WeCare journeyed from its nascent ideation stage to being pitched in front of a panel of judges at Cumberland Lodge. Through the participation in this journey, the knowledge and foundation needed to develop Solis had been acquired, long before the idea came to our mind.

The Team

I remember having a conversation with Minah at Cumberland Lodge about an idea I had pitched with my team at the Stanford Health++ Hackathon in 2018. The idea consisted in monitoring vitals such as respiration and pulse using only a smartphone’s camera. This unknowingly led to the formation of the team behind Solis; a doctor with years of formal and informal experience in dealing with individuals struggling with mental health issues and a computer scientist with deep interest in neuroscience and healthcare. We decided to work up an idea for Imperial College’s ‘Global Health Innovation Challenge’ and, looking at the past submissions to the challenge, we realised that there were none addressing mental health. The drive to come up with the next innovation to aid mental health was born. We met frequently in the common rooms of Kellogg and St Anne’s College. However, with the examinations taking precedence, the momentum of the team was significantly dampened. With a few weeks to go before the deadline of the Global Health Innovation Challenge, we decided to drop out.

The Muse

Around the same time, St Anne’s College had organised a talk on the importance of sleep by Dr Russel Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience at Oxford. Although I had a general understanding about the importance of sleep and the biological mechanisms that govern it, the talk introduced me to the role of circadian rhythm in mental health and the concept of light therapy. The results and statistics presented by Dr Foster were very impressive, suggesting the benefits of using light therapy as a complementary treatment to medication and other conventional forms of therapy. However, the sceptic in me was not going to allow me to be convinced before conducting my own research. I spent that night watching videos and reading about the efficacy of light therapy, the simple but effective biological mechanism behind it and the role of shifted circadian clocks in several depressive disorders. Having spent all my life in India, I had never realised the negative impact of the lack of sunlight on mental health and sleep due to a disrupted circadian rhythm. The talk had seeded a thought. The only remaining element was the motivation to transform this thought into Solis.

The Motivation

Hilary Term brought with it this missing motivation in the form of ‘The Oxford All Innovate’ competition and a call for new ideas for the WHT Enterprise Challenge. Minah and I took this opportunity to rekindle our brainstorming sessions. Late at night on the 6th of February at the St Aldates G&Ds, we introduced Solis to the WHT Enterprise Challenge. A few days later we submitted Solis as our idea for the Oxford All Innovate competition. The most important point learnt from pitching WeCare at Cumberland Lodge was the importance of finding the simplest sustainable solution to the problem being addressed without adding excessive features that would render the task of running the enterprise extremely challenging. We incorporated this learning into Solis and designed it to be a smartphone application that could track light therapy sessions using the phone’s sensors and provide actionable advice to the users that would help improve their mood and mental health. The objective was to make it agnostic of the light therapy lamp being used so it could be one solution that fits all. This introduced some complication by adding on the need to make it compatible with a wide range of devices. We went ahead with the idea, pitched it at the All Innovate competition, got through to the semi-finals and unfortunately, that was the end of the All Innovate journey. It was clear that Solis required rethinking.

The Final Stretch

After the unsuccessful result of the All Innovate competition, we redirected our focus on the Enterprise Challenge. To make matters difficult, COVID19 sent the world into lockdown and thus began the phase of Zoom calls. With just about three months to go before the final pitch, we were fortunate to have Justin Gayner agree to mentor us through the final stretch. Through the virtual discussions with Justin, we realised the hidden complexities of attempting to make Solis device agnostic. To tackle the problem, we introduced the Solis box, a light box fit with the required sensors to track a light therapy session and the means to communicate with the Solis app and synchronise the tracking information. Occam’s razor came to the rescue. This cut out all the unnecessary complexity with the issue of compatibility. Solis, as it is known today, had finally taken shape. With the last few days left before the pitch, we modified our pitch deck and recorded our pitch over Zoom.

The final pitch of the Enterprise Challenge commenced. As the other scholars started presenting their enterprises, my WhatsApp chat with Minah started getting filled with nervous exchanges. Just before our turn, we pinned our videos on the Zoom call and an agreement was reached on a nod as the signal of confidence to answer a question. Our pitch video was played and the eight minutes of questioning was soon over. Alexandra announced the results and Solis was recognised as the enterprise with most potential. My reaction: ‘What?’. Minah’s reaction: ‘Did she say Solis?’. We had successfully completed the final stretch of the Enterprise Challenge and Solis shone as bright as ever.