Principal Investigator Professor Felicity Baker first developed the idea of creating a music intervention training program for family carers back in 2008. In 2017, together with colleagues in Australia, Norway, UK, Germany, and Poland, we further refined the training program, which we named HOMESIDE, and tested it in a large randomised controlled trial. Realising that an in-person training program like HOMESIDE could never be made accessible to the vast majority of carers of people with dementia, the idea emerged of developing a scalable mobile application to deliver this training.
In 2020-2021, we translated the in-person carer training program into digital content and developed the first prototype of the mobile application tailored solely for the home context. We will be testing the Minimal Viable Product in 2022.
During 2022-2023, we will refine the Minimal Viable Product for in home use, and then adapt the existing training content for use in residential aged care. Concurrently, we will be advancing the functionality of the app by mapping and then continuously monitoring digital markers of agitation using wearable/environmental sensors and using Artificial Intelligence. Building on this, we will develop an intuitive music adaption system to regulate changes in agitation.
At the final stage of our project, we will test the feasibility and capture the clinical and cost effectiveness of the mobile application in people living at home and in residential aged care.
You can read more about the progress of MATCH and the studies we are conducting here.
If you are a carer of someone living with dementia, we invite you to register your interest in participating in one of our studies trialling MATCH.
