Central students develop mobile app that will direct social services to those in need

By Emma Carmichael

Central Connecticut State University's Allied Health Sciences Conference showcased a developing app called Hoyan that posed two simple but ambitious questions: What if getting a dental cleaning earned you points toward a reward? Or scheduling a job interview moves a progress bar forward on your phone?

Those questions drove the presentation by Ken House of TryCycle Data Systems and Ari Edgar of The Hartford, who unveiled the app as a mobile platform designed to connect low-income users — starting with Native American tribal communities — with the social services they need and reward them for engaging with those services.

Central software engineering students Emily Matava, Malachi Sor, Samuel Lamore, and Isaac Gonzalez are developing the app as part of their course and capstone work with Dr. Stan Kurkovsky. The app centralizes housing, healthcare, employment, financial literacy, and education into a single interface. Every completed task — a doctor's visit, a job application, opening a savings account — contributes to a “self-sufficiency score” displayed at the center of the home screen.

The first question House asked was “If you bring a pot of soup to a family with no bowl and no spoon, how good is the soup?” Now this is a rhetorical question, however, House used that analogy to describe the core problem Hoyan is trying to solve: That social services exist, but the infrastructure to connect people to them is often missing. He pointed to his own tribal nation in Wisconsin, which contributes more than $930 million annually to the state economy yet still carries a poverty rate above 20 percent. 

“Human services,” he said, “is insufficient to the task.”

New users begin with a vital signs assessment measuring not just practical needs but emotional wellbeing and self-perception. A dashboard then gives case managers and social workers a real-time view of each user’s progress. An “Urgent” button, deliberately placed front and center in the app, allows users in crisis to alert a local case manager — who can deliver groceries or essentials before a missed bill spirals into eviction.

Rather than direct cash payments, Hoyan rewards progress with points redeemable for incentives. 

“We want to encourage people to get all their medical stuff done, or to get a job,” House said. “All these good things.”

A prototype is expected by the end of the current academic semester, with a pilot planned for this summer across two tribal nations before expanding public housing residents, and people with disabilities.