A Hull healthtech business is piloting a playlist of relaxing Christmas songs for people living with dementia.
MediMusic, a company developing technology that aims to prescribe music as medicine to ease pain and reduce anxiety, has teamed up with a care home for the first time to help 29 residents. It follows trials with the NHS that found it reduced the heart rate in anxious dementia patients by 25 per cent. The tracks are also being made available through Spotify to all families and care facilities to use.
With an estimated 940,000 people living with dementia and around 540,000 carers in the UK, the onset of shorter winter days exacerbates ‘sundowning’ - a collection of symptoms such as anger, aggression and irritation, which tend to occur as daylight fades.
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Gary Jones, chief executive and co-founder of MediMusic, is a former music industry executive. He developed the technology after trying to help the mother of a family friend who was living with dementia.
He said: “She went from being a very strong-minded farmer's wife looking after the cattle on a farm, to someone who had vascular dementia after going into hospital from breaking a hip “The only time she appeared to be happy was when music was playing. So I started building playlists using an algorithm I designed that selected the most suitable and calming music. And it worked.
“We’ve managed to digitally fingerprint the DNA of music so we can deliver the right songs as medicine to ease anxiety and stress. You could say it’s a musical pharmaceutical.
“Sundowning is a huge issue for people living with dementia as it makes them much more anxious. Darker nights in winter can be very long and many family carers find their loved one’s behaviour more difficult to deal with.
“So we used MediMusic to search all the well-known Christmas songs that have the ability to reduce stress in people living with dementia.
“Using MediMusic could also reduce the use of drugs in treating anxiety and pain in patients by up to a quarter, thereby saving money for the NHS and care homes.
“Dispensing music as medicine is going to revolutionise the treatment of people in pain and stress. We hope our Dementia Christmas Playlist will bring some comfort and joy to all families who have to live with dementia.”
MediMusic has recently secured strong financial backing and is now being supported by Abbey Road Studios’ tech incubator. It also won the Hull Live Start-up of the Year Award last month.
The first care home to trial MediMusic with the Christmas Dementia playlist is award-winning Orchard Court Care Home in Brigg, North Lincolnshire.
Manager, Tracy Mussett said: “Sundowning is something we see every day in our residents living with dementia. It starts towards the end of the day when we see an increase in anxiety, confusion and unsettled behaviour that can continue long into the night. It’s particularly bad in winter as the nights draw in faster.
“We know how beneficial playing music in the home is to residents’ wellbeing. It can prompt memories of happier times and make them feel at ease. That’s why we are very excited to be trialling MediMusic in our home to measure the impact of music dispensed as medicine.
“We’ve started playing their Christmas playlist to our residents and we’ve visibly seen it make a real difference to them.”
Dr Jacqueline Twamley, academic research and innovation manager at the Centre for Health Research & Innovation at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which has been trialling MediMusic on dementia patients, said: “Prescribing music as medicine could revolutionise the treatment of dementia. We know one of the accepted tips to alleviate the symptoms of sundowning is to get into a routine and listen to calming music.
“We ran a trial on 25 patients suffering from dementia and the results were really impressive. At the end of the playlist, agitation did not resume for about an hour afterwards.
“We hope this Christmas playlist will help families and their loved ones living with dementia have a peaceful festive period.
“MediMusic’s link up with Abbey Road Red will also help us expand our trials to look into using this innovation for other conditions such as chronic back pain.”
