The Memory Tracks app helps stimulate memory, manage agitation, assist with care, and support important daily routines through song-task association. By connecting memorable songs to necessary tasks through our simple app we can change behaviour, and make it much easier to give and receive care.
Dementia is a degenerative disease, it affects how the brain works, in particular to remember, think and reason. The steady deterioration of brain function causes a wide range of daily issues, such as anxiety, disorientation, anger, fear, irritability, depression, and withdrawal.
Music is an underused tool across health and wellbeing, despite its extraordinary therapeutic potential, and is rarely used at the point-of-care, where it can have the biggest impact. Using the Memory Tracks ‘song-task association’ platform we can direct the benefit to where it is most needed.
Music has a proven a powerful effect on the brain. Recent research shows that it helps in pain reduction, stress relief, memory, and brain injuries. Music builds long-term associative memories, often closely tied to emotions which can be more resilient to loss than other types of memory.
Research
In 2018 we completed our initial research using Memory Tracks in care homes in North Wales. The study identified a positive impact on both care home residents and the staff from using the Memory Tracks app to enable Song-Task Association at the point-of-care.
The research was published in September 2019 in The Journal of Healthcare Engineering:
Assessing Wellbeing in People Living with Dementia Using Reminiscence Music with a Mobile App (Memory Tracks): A Mixed Methods Cohort Study