Music Attuned Technology Care eHealth (MATCH): A music based mobile eHealth
The Australian Government announced a $180 million investment in ground-breaking medical research projects around Australia to improve the lives of Australians and their loved ones. This includes $2 million for a "Music Attuned Technology Care eHealth (MATCH)" project involving a brilliant team of researchers from the University of Melbourne and CSIRO.
Researchers include experts in music therapy, human computer interaction, old age psychiatry, physiotherapy, speech pathology, occupational therapy, software engineering (artificial intelligence), and hardware engineering (wearable sensors and motion detectors).
The MATCH project will develop and test an innovative music therapy informed eHealth program to support people living with dementia and their carers. The team will deliver a new patient-centred music program developed for use in home, residential aged care, and during the often-stressful transition period from home to RAC.
This ground-breaking development will for the first time, detect and interpret changes in agitation in response to music interventions by incorporating auditory and motion sensor monitoring of the behavioural markers. Information derived from artificial intelligence will inform future music choices to match and then continuously adapt music characteristics to regulate agitation and other behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia, across all stages of disease progression.
MATCH will be a scalable eHealth program that bridges the divide in access to music therapy services between regional and metropolitan Australia by embedding carer training of music use for therapeutic benefit.
