LONDON (CelebrityAccess) — Warner Music Group announced a partnership with the British health tech startup MediMusic, in a bid to explore the use of music to relieve pain, anxiety, and stress.
Through the partnership, MediMusic will conduct multiple closed trials in both the U.S. and U.K. where they provide playlists of music licensed from WMG’s catalogs to various patients and sample groups, to evaluate music’s effects on healing and well-being.
According to the two companies, MediMusic will rely on its proprietary algorithms to extract the relevant features from the digital DNA of a piece of music, resulting in a fingerprint for healthcare use. MediMusic will then leerage Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and the data collected from patient to develop personalized playlist.
The playlists are designed to reduce heart rate and stress hormones, like cortisol, and promote relaxation through hormones like dopamine and oxytocin. A heart rate monitor worn on the wrist allows MediMusic to monitor the physiological effect of a piece of music, and if the listener’s heart rate does not respond as expected, MediMusic’s ‘Digital Drip’ uses Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to swap out forthcoming playlist tracks to invoke slower relaxation if required.
Initial trials focused on people living with dementia in the UK, where the playlists were found to reduce the heart rate in anxious dementia patients by 25%. MediMusic has already been piloted in care homes in the UK, including Orchard Court Care Home in Brigg, North Lincolnshire for its 29 residents.
“This partnership with WMG is hugely important in helping us on our global mission to prescribe music and medicine to ease anxiety, pain, and stress,” says Gary Jones, CEO and co-founder of MediMusic. “We’ve always known music is good for our soul. But there are thousands of medical papers and studies that prove music can also improve our health. Together with WMG’s catalogue of music, we can gather more data to improve our technology so that music can be used as medicine to help people around the world.”
