GMV, the Hospital San Pau and UOC drive the creation of a new APP using music therapy to improve the quality of life of Parkinson’s sufferers

The computer app has been designed by computer scientists, music-therapy experts and physicians, with the collaboration of patients, carers and members of the Catalan Parkinson’s Association. The APP will help to improve patients’ mobility and state of mind and also to carry out music-based treatment of Parkinson’s Disease patients.

This prototype has won a competition held by the collaborative Innovation Community called Open eHealth Parkinson, comprising GMV, the Hospital de San Pau Research Institute (Instituto de Investigación del Hospital de Sant Pau) and the Open University of Catalonia (Universidad Oberta de Catalunya). The app is now expected to be fully up-and-running within a year. During the pilot scheme GMV supervised the technical aspects, though its involvement will be even greater in the second phase.

The application has been conceived to be used both individually or in collaboration with the carer and for patients in all the various stages of the illness, with very different degrees of cognitive deterioration, motor deterioration, language impairment and mood swings.

International research has shown that musical activities such as dancing, singing or just listening to music are a good therapeutic reinforcement for Parkinson’s sufferers. Music has beneficial effects on their motor capacity but above all on their cognitive and emotive capacity. Medical researchers therefore hope that, with the previous consent of users, the data collected will foster further progress in research into Parkinson’s Disease, which currently affects over 150,000 people in Spain.