Embrace: Enhancing Emotional Support through Digital Storytelling (2025-2026)

Background

The treatment of serious illness requires attention to more than just physical symptoms. Patients facing life-altering or even terminal diagnoses and their families also need support for their mental, spiritual and emotional health. There is a need for interdisciplinary exploration of how technology can help reduce loneliness and provide comfort for critically ill patients.

Embrace is an innovative digital platform designed to provide emotional support and facilitate legacy creation, especially for individuals in healthcare settings such as palliative care and hospice. This platform enables patients, caregivers and families to craft and share personalized video montages and multimedia stories, fostering meaningful connections and preserving cherished memories. By offering a space for individuals to share life experiences, Embrace aims to enhance mental resilience and emotional well-being during life’s most challenging moments.

Project Description

This project team will work to develop and deploy the Embrace platform. Through a user-centered co-design and randomized controlled trial, the team will refine and evaluate Embrace’s impact on mental well-being and social connectedness. This project will proceed in three phases:

1. Research and Development: Team members will conduct a literature review on legacy creation and emotional support, followed by interviews with patients, caregivers and healthcare providers to gather insights into user needs. The findings will inform the Embrace platform’s features, such as AI-driven storytelling prompts, multimedia sharing tools and a compassionate, easy-to-navigate interface.
2. Pilot Testing and Iteration: Pilot testing will involve Duke students, patients and caregivers, who will use the platform and provide feedback on usability, emotional impact and user experience. Data will be gathered from quantitative surveys on mental well-being and social connection, along with qualitative interviews for deeper insights. This feedback will drive iterative improvements, enhancing platform functionality.
3. Full Deployment and Evaluation: Embrace will be deployed across Duke Health’s networks. The team will perform a comprehensive evaluation to assess long-term emotional outcomes, using surveys to track changes in resilience and connectedness over time. Qualitative interviews will provide additional feedback on user satisfaction and platform usability.

The team will break into three subteams, with one focused on platform development, one focused on emotional and social research, and one focused on outreach and impact.

Anticipated Outputs

Digital platform for emotional storytelling; academic publication; outreach campaign; best practices toolkit; data collection to support further research

Student Opportunities

Ideally, this project team will include 2 graduate students and 4 undergraduate students from diverse disciplines, including computer science and AI; user experience design; psychology; healthcare and palliative care; social work; sociology; public health; and communications. One graduate student will be selected to serve as a project manager.

Students will engage in hands-on, interdisciplinary work throughout the year. They will collaborate in three subteams as well as meeting with the full team each week. Students with backgrounds in tech and user experience will help design, prototype and test the digital platform, learning skills in app development, user-centered design and AI-driven personalization. Psychology and social work students will conduct qualitative and quantitative research on emotional resilience and legacy creation, gaining skills in data collection, interview techniques, survey design and statistical analysis. Public health and communications students will develop and implement outreach strategies to engage healthcare providers and communities, building skills in campaign design, public speaking and community engagement. In addition, graduate students will gain mentorship experience and may contribute to a co-authored publication.

This project includes an optional summer component, which will take place over eight weeks, from early June to late July 2025. Students will be expected to work approximately 10-15 hours per week during this period. Participants will focus on platform development, user feedback collection and initial research activities, setting a strong foundation for the fall semester.

Timing

Summer 2025 – Spring 2024

• Summer 2025 (optional): Conduct initial literature review; update preliminary platform prototype and gather feedback; update IRB submission; establish initial outreach strategy
• Fall 2025: Complete IRB approval process; launch initial pilot testing; conduct qualitative interviews and collect survey data; refine platform based on feedback; begin developing personalized AI prompts
• Spring 2026: Expand pilot testing; analyze data on impact and usability; continue platform refinement; develop outreach materials for healthcare providers; draft and submit manuscript for publication
• Summer 2026 (optional): Finalize platform updates; prepare a toolkit and outreach campaign; present findings at a conference or to Duke community stakeholders; develop a sustainability and scaling plan

Crediting

Academic credit available for fall and spring semesters; summer funding available