Client Profile
Company Name: i Got This! Mental Health and Wellbeing Assistants
Founded: 2024
Headquarters: United Kingdom
Industry: Digital Health / AI Avatars / Mental Health Technology
Founder: Ann Watson (solo founder; former head teacher, carer, charity and local government experience)
Funding: Self-funded, supported by AWS Activate
Company Size: Early-stage startup (solo founder with Perfsys as technology partner)
Website: igt-pa.co.uk
Crowdfunding Campaign: Crowdfunder Profile
Introduction
i Got This! is pioneering AI-powered mental health assistants designed to listen, respond with empathy, and guide users through calming techniques when support is needed most. Unlike purely clinical tools, these assistants fill the gap between therapy sessions and the moments when people hesitate to reach out, with the specific aim of prevention of self harm and suicide.
Perfsys partnered with founder Ann Watson to create an investor-ready MVP that balances user safety, cutting-edge AI, data security, and scalability on AWS. By combining empathetic avatars with a secure serverless backend, we helped transform a vision into a demo-ready product capable of attracting investor attention.
Background
Ann Watson founded i Got This! in 2024, driven by decades of personal and professional experience supporting people in challenging circumstances. As a carer for her autistic daughter, former head teacher, and advocate for families navigating complex systems, she saw first-hand how rising mental health challenges impact not only those who are suffering but also their families and society as a whole.
Her idea was simple but ambitious: build an accessible, AI-driven assistant that listens without judgment, promotes healthier habits, and guides users toward professional resources when needed. After a failed attempt with another vendor on a mobile-first build, Ann turned to Perfsys in April 2025. By July 2025, we had signed and launched the project with a web-first, mobile-friendly MVP, giving her a working product faster and at lower cost.
The Challenge
The project came with a few big challenges. Because Ann's solution introduces a new way to combine AI and human empathy, protecting intellectual property and data security was a key part of our design approach. The client wanted to use avatars to create a human-like experience, but testing on the original third party platform was proving very expensive. At the same time, the MVP still needed to impress investors — it had to be scalable, secure, and built to follow Government guidelines as well as AWS best practices.
Technically, this meant:
- Decoupling avatar UI from AI logic
- Designing a secure, real-time communication layer on AWS to connect the avatars with the AI engine
- Implementing guardrails for sensitive topics like self-harm and suicide using AWS Bedrock
- Allowing the AWS Bedrock AI Agent to return structured data, like actions (e.g., redirecting to an exercise page)
- Ensuring a mobile-friendly MVP with a path to native mobile (React Native) later
Our Approach
We structured development in three clear phases.
Phase 1 — SDK Validation
We began by experimenting with third party avatars' SDK to understand capabilities and constraints. A lightweight UI-only app confirmed feasibility and provided the foundation for the next steps.
Phase 2 — Web App MVP on AWS Amplify
We delivered a web app hosted on AWS Amplify, with Cognito for secure sign-up/sign-in and profile management. This enabled early user testing where the third party avatar handled conversations through its built-in AI.
- Authentication and secure user pools via Cognito
- Personal information captured during onboarding
- Initial conversational flows (e.g., breathing exercises) handled by third party AI engine
Phase 3 — Decoupled AI on AWS Bedrock
To reduce cost and gain control, we separated avatar UX from AI logic. Avatars became the interface only, while AI processing shifted to Amazon Bedrock.
- Backend: AWS Lambda and API Gateway power the interaction between the avatars and the AI engine, ensuring performance and scalability.
- Communication layer: The backend securely manages real-time interactions so that avatars respond naturally while the intelligence runs on AWS Bedrock.
- AI agent in Bedrock: System prompt for role and ethics, guardrails for sensitive topics, and structured JSON outputs for actions.
- Personalization: User profile data captured in Cognito onboarding was passed as session metadata into Bedrock with every request, enabling more tailored responses.
- Future extensibility: The design leaves room to connect a curated Knowledge Base in Bedrock, so the agent can access relevant mental health content beyond its system prompt.
Results
By the end of Phase 3, the MVP met both the technical and business goals:
- >90% cost savings: Avatar testing usage dropped from ≈300–350 minutes/month to ≈20 minutes by moving AI logic to Bedrock.
- Scalable AWS stack: 7 AWS services (Amplify, Cognito, API Gateway, Lambda, DynamoDB, Bedrock, S3/CloudFront) built a due-diligence-friendly, serverless foundation.
- Bedrock control & safety: Hosting AI on Bedrock gave us full control over prompts, metadata, and guardrails, ensuring conversations were safe, personalized, and extensible. It also opened a path to add a Knowledge Base and experiment with hybrid model routing for performance.
These outcomes positioned i Got This! as investor-ready — not just a prototype, but a secure, compliant, and scalable product.
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Client Feedback
The founder shared their experience in a verified Clutch review:
"Perfsys were extremely professional on every level. Their interest in the project made me feel they were my own in-house development team. They listened, understood the priorities, and delivered everything exactly as requested." — Ann Watson, Founder, i Got This! iGT-PA Ltd (Clutch Review, Oct 2025)
The client awarded Perfsys 5.0 out of 5 across all categories — quality, schedule, cost, and willingness to refer.
Conclusion & Next Steps
The MVP proved the vision: empathetic AI avatars, powered by AWS Bedrock, ready to support mental health at scale. Our ongoing work with i Got This! focuses on three fronts:
- Performance: exploring hybrid model routing (fast models for small talk, richer models for complex flows).
- Knowledge: building a curated knowledge base to make the agent smarter beyond system prompts.
- UX: onboarding improvements and avatar personalization ahead of upcoming showcases.
FAQ
Eugene Orlovsky
CEO & Founder | Serverless architect with 10+ years of hands-on experience designing cloud-native architectures on AWS, backed by multiple AWS certifications. He is writing bridges deep technical expertise with real-world business strategy, covering topics from AWS best practices to scaling tech-driven organizations.
