Our project focuses on the challenge of providing accessible treatment for young people (aged 14 - 25) impacted by eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder. An estimated 98% of people in the UK with an eating disorder have not received specialist NHS care. There is a significant lack of capacity within existing healthcare provision due to cost and labour supply issues. Even when treatment is available many young people avoid, delay or drop out of treatment due to feelings of shame or embarrassment. This project will explore the potential for a digital application to meet this challenge through a combination of online guided Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy for Eating Disorders, digital behaviour-change support and access to a peer community. Our hypothesis is that such a solution could provide a more accessible and non-stigmatizing approach as well as being lower cost and more scaleable. Treatment for eating disorders has not changed significantly for over 20 years. During the pandemic, many treatments became available via video calls but they do not generally tap into the potential of a designed-for-digital approach. Meanwhile, digital therapeutics is a fast growing field within mental health but patients with eating disorders are significantly overlooked and underserved. There is a clear opportunity for digital app combined with human connection and community. Specifically, we are not aware of an online guided CBT for eating disorders available on the market anywhere in the world despite it being the most evidence-based treatment and recommended by NICE. We will take a humanity-centred design approach that actively involves people with lived experience throughout the process and builds Beanbag's network of lived experience advisers for the future. The project will build on and supplement existing user research to produce users personas and user journeys for the key stakeholders. These will be used to develop a high level product specification. Beanbag Health is an early stage start-up founded specifically to address this challenge by two founders with lived experience of the challenge and deep motivation to address it. Livework Studio brings 20 years experience of service design including in digital health. The project will position Beanbag to raise commercial investment to bring this product to market and we hope in time will directly benefit large numbers of young people with eating disorders. It will also embed design thinking and capabilities within Beanbag and cement a long term relationship between Beanbag and Livework.

Our project focuses on the challenge of providing accessible treatment for young people (aged 14 - 25) impacted by eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder. An estimated 98% of people in the UK with an eating disorder have not received specialist NHS care. There is a significant lack of capacity within existing healthcare provision due to cost and labour supply issues. Even when treatment is available many young people avoid, delay or drop out of treatment due to feelings of shame or embarrassment. This project will explore the potential for a digital application to meet this challenge through a combination of online guided Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy for Eating Disorders, digital behaviour-change support and access to a peer community. Our hypothesis is that such a solution could provide a more accessible and non-stigmatizing approach as well as being lower cost and more scaleable. Treatment for eating disorders has not changed significantly for over 20 years. During the pandemic, many treatments became available via video calls but they do not generally tap into the potential of a designed-for-digital approach. Meanwhile, digital therapeutics is a fast growing field within mental health but patients with eating disorders are significantly overlooked and underserved. There is a clear opportunity for digital app combined with human connection and community. Specifically, we are not aware of an online guided CBT for eating disorders available on the market anywhere in the world despite it being the most evidence-based treatment and recommended by NICE. We will take a humanity-centred design approach that actively involves people with lived experience throughout the process and builds Beanbag's network of lived experience advisers for the future. The project will build on and supplement existing user research to produce users personas and user journeys for the key stakeholders. These will be used to develop a high level product specification. Beanbag Health is an early stage start-up founded specifically to address this challenge by two founders with lived experience of the challenge and deep motivation to address it. Livework Studio brings 20 years experience of service design including in digital health. The project will position Beanbag to raise commercial investment to bring this product to market and we hope in time will directly benefit large numbers of young people with eating disorders. It will also embed design thinking and capabilities within Beanbag and cement a long term relationship between Beanbag and Livework.

**Overview** Beanbag Health is a purpose-driven business aiming to transform support for young people suffering with eating disorders through a highly empowering approach, avoiding an overly clinical look and feel, and placing emphasis on peer support as much as clinical input. The Beanbag digital app will support people to manage their own journey of recovery, change their behaviours and maintain their recovery through four features: 1\. Safe, supportive peer community 2\. Self-serve content platform drawing from evidence-based treatments 3\. Behaviour change support and just in time adaptive interventions. 4\. Recovery coaches to guide users through treatment programmes. **Project Vision and objectives** This project will develop our working prototype into a beta version that we can test with users at scale. The beta version will be our minimum viable product and part of our critical path to raising further investment and also to trialling our product with the NHS and private clinics. Our prototype was developed through extensive codesign and user testing since January 2022 and will continue to generate insights through to year end. However, the prototype does not integrate the various product components well and many processes need to be run manually by the Beanbag team so we can only accommodate a low number of users. The beta app will be a substantial improvement in user experience and introduce basic just-in-time adaptive interventions to shift behaviours. It will also provide scalability, by automating various processes currently done manually and incorporating a robust quality and clinical risk management system to comply with NHS commissioning requirements. **Details of how innovative** Not only will our product be evidence-based; it will have an empowering and approachable look and feel. This is very different from a traditional purely clinical service as it provides relatable, non-judgmental but trustworthy support that can be digested in small, immediately actionable steps as well as opportunities for deeper psychological support. Our app will be the first online guided CBT for eating disorders commercially available anywhere in the world and the first eating disorder app to use just-in-time adaptive interventions. The combination of peer community with treatment also makes us distinctive.