This post has been updated from an earlier version.
One year after Pure Tech launched The Sync Project in an effort to initiate studies to gather data on how people respond to music, it’s preparing to launch an app that will make it possible for anyone using one of the main wearable brands to take part in the largest music therapy initiative of its kind.
In an interview with The Sync Project CEO Marko Ahtisaari, who is also former head of product development for Nokia, he explained some of the initiatives it has developed to validate music therapy data in different patient populations. He also explained its strategy to expand from small studies to the large public one.
“Our first human pilot study was [the impact of music on] high intensity interval training. But other studies — focusing on sleep, pain, movement disorders — are where we believe there’s the most potential,” he said. “Until now, all these studies were recruited by us or our partners. We’re now entering more large-scale data collection that will make it possible for anyone who wants to, to download our app [and contribute data].”
Among the biometric data it hopes to collect from its crowdsourced study are the biometric effect of music on things like heart rate, sleep patterns and gait by looking at beat, depth of rhythm, key, the kind of instruments used in the tunes. It has partnered with wearables developers such as Jawbone, Fitbit, Basis watch, Apple watch. It has also struck similar partnerships with online music providers such as Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud and YouTube. Ahtisaari said the app will be made publicly available later this year.
In the run-up to this endeavor, The Sync Project has added some music luminaries to its scientific advisory board including Peter Gabriel, who was once lead guitarist and vocalist for Genesis, solo artist Annie “St. Vincent” Clark, electronic musician Jon Hopkins and Esa-Pekka Salonen — a composer in residence with the New York Philharmonic and principal conductor for London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. Each of them has used technology in their approach to music. It also added the former Biogen Idec executive vice president Steve Holtzman, to its board of directors. Holtzman is on the board of trustees at the Berklee College of Music, which has a program with MIT.
“We felt the board could benefit directly from his experience in biotech,” said Ahtisaari. “We’re dealing with a very new areas. There are no clear rules for digital medicine yet.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Asked how they planned to track and analyze the data they collect, Ahtisaari acknowledged the complexity of the challenge.
“It is not easy, but if it were easy, it would not be fun.”
