Establishment of a Music Care System for the Elderly in a Long-term Care Facility

Abstract

Music is an essential tool in a long-term care facility, especially for senior patients with dementia. Many studies indicate listening to familiar music can arouse the elders’ memories and emotions, improving their social and cognitive abilities and care quality. It is important to design a feasible and effective music care system to collect objective data and music features to execute the quantitative analysis and evidence-based research. The trial process of this research integrated music listening intervention, biosignal measurement and analysis, and music information retrieval. We designed a Music Care System (MCS) to incorporate music listening system and physiological data recording for the elderly in a long-term care facility. To verify the system, we implemented three months of music listening experiment and interviewed the specific group who nursed the elders to evaluate the process. The results showed that the continuous biosignal recording data could function as the reference information to design a care plan. They also indicated the familiar and cheerful songs enabled the listeners to keep attention to activities. For future research, we will develop an APP to integrate the system with the medical care information of the facility and to provide records of the music care for long-term caregiving.