Hi @David_NEAR
Thank you for a detailed response and raising questions that we can shed light on.
I’ve tried to answer all the questions you’ve asked. Please let me know if this makes sense or are there any more grey areas that you might want clarity on.
Our council members are trying their best to make this work as our research, experience and belief has shown that this could be an area which could help millions of users in the future which would make NEAR reach more people and would allow NEAR to be seen in the light of good humanitarian work
Your questions are marked in bold and the responses follow after that.
“Although I think there’s every good intention in this proposal, I don’t see how it completely relates to NEAR. It more seems like something that NEAR has been squeezed into.”
The reason for this proposition is to onboard therapists and test therapies in metaverse using NearHub, for a community of online therapists to thrive in the NEAR ecosystem.
This helps NEAR in following ways
- Onboarding therapists and clients on NEAR - This itself can onboard hundreds of online based therapists and users and allow them to interact with NEAR wallets, Mintbase to mint their NFTs and get familiar with the NEAR ecosystem.
- We will provide them custom environments to have therapies in the metaverse (nearhub) instead of a zoom call or a video call. This itself could have a lot of demand as clients now can design the space that is comfortable for them to have therapies in. The spaces would be designed by NearHub, generating revenue for NEAR
- NEAR branded social media and blog for MetaTherapy DAO will provide brand outreach to thousands.
- It will give NEAR protocol an informational and research leverage as we would have tested metaverse space for therapies and we’ll know what are the advantages and issues.
- It will position NEAR as a futuristic and humanitarian brand as it is trying to solve an issue that millions are suffering from
“Where did you get this quote from? I spoke to the NH team and they said they weren’t in contact with you?”
Got the quote for NearHub from the link mentioned below. Haven’t spoken to them yet. If the price is lesser then it will be even better. I don’t mind modifying the proposal to a lesser price.
This sounds expensive and unnecessary.
We can’t say if it’s unnecessary or not because we haven’t tested it yet. This is anyway in the 2nd Phase after the DAO starts generating money through online consultations in the metaverse.
This will be one of the last areas to be explored as it could be costly with unknown chances of success.
According to our therapist onboard, who has worked on exposure therapy, she thinks it could really help people get over fears of spiders, heights, insects etc. However, we do not know if it will be successful or not. If it works NEAR could be one of the first to do this.
“Where are you seeing the demand for this?”
This came in just yesterday and is literally what MetaTherapy is aiming at.
MENTAL METAVERSE - TAGO LEADS THE WORLD IN APPLYING BLOCKCHAIN IN MENTAL HEALTH CARE
The market expects to reach US$ 493.8 Billion by 2027
https://www.imarcgroup.com/mental-health-market
You can find information projected about the future of mental health industry in the market research done below
https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/mental-health-market-A11770
I’ve additionally attached a few screenshots of a few top online therapy websites as seen in a website analysis tool called Ahrefs. It’s one of the best paid tools to analyse monthly websites stats and is regularly updated.
Please look at Organic Traffic on top right of the screenshot. You will see that the traffic is between 100k to 1Million users per month for different websites offering online therapy and online meditations.
[Note - The traffic on these sites are also conservative as these tools ( like Ahrefs) can’t index all the pages on the internet and according to them, the organic traffic is generally 3-4 times higher than what is shown in the organic search bar]
Don’t judge the number of tabs opened 
“Therapy and counselling is a bordered environment bound by regulations and patient-doctor confidentiality (at least here in the UK). I don’t think the same levels of checks and balances would be able to be upheld in an environment like this.”
These are valid questions and this is where we are stuck
- How to get HIPAA compliance for the DAO
- How to secure the sessions and patient doctor confidentiality from a technical standpoint in the metaverse
- Can we create personal spaces for each therapist and is it possible for recordings to be absolutely private? Can they be encrypted when stored on our servers?
- Will developers have access to the recordings and can this not be the case?
- What are other areas that we are not able to see yet which could be a fatal error for this project
I’d be more than happy to discuss this if we have any legal team which is onboard, so we can figure out grey areas. This is where we would need help.
I can see you’re verifying their documents but it then boils down to who’s watching the watchmen?
- All of the therapists will have a Masters Degree or a Doctorate Degree in their field. They will have to be qualified and certified by their state’s professional board after successfully completing the necessary education, exams, training and practice. While their experience, expertise, and background vary, they all must possess at least 3 years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience.
- Art based therapists need a certificate from an organisation they learned from.
- Life coaches and meditation teachers may or may not possess documentation.
This is the criteria on various websites who are leading online therapy today and we’d like to adhere to the same.
These are our first draft guidelines which are subject to change if new information comes to light.
I hope I have answered your questions. Let me know if you have any other query.
If everything is answered, I’d request you to guide us with
Legal team, so we can understand what areas we need to work on.
Other DAOs who you think can help us fund this
Anyone who could potentially mentor us to realise this goal
Thanks
Sahil