Student project led by TJ Jordan
Student round 2018

Project website:  www.omhn.org.
Interview with project manager:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0936gpw (2hrs 51)

ABSTRACT

The Oxford Mental Health Network (OMHN) is a not-for-profit organisation founded in October 2016 at the University of Oxford. We are dedicated to connecting the people of Oxfordshire to the mental health resources that they need through awareness campaigns, social media and our website.

The focus of this project is to build a free website/web app based on our current prototype website, improving its functionality, usability and design, particularly on mobile devices. The OMHN website is a ‘mental health search engine’ that allows users to find Oxfordshire’s resources and events by keyword, location and category, and save them to a personal profile.

With the same resource database as its basic framework, the OMHN App will build on this template. Our new and improved app will provide more user-friendly experience, greater opportunity to interact with the resources in our database, better mobile compatability and more cooperation on information with the local charities, campaigns and services that we list: more intelligent search functions, more information security, personalised newsfeed updates, in-app charity donations, an integrated mental health events calendar, and an admin portal for organisations to update their own information.

This app will be marketed to both students and the general population of Oxfordshire. We believe that the OMHN App would be useful to anyone in the county—after all, we all have mental health. By providing this platform, we hope to increase the connectivity of the local world of mental health for service users, campaigners, fundraisers, charities, the NHS and private service providers alike.