SerenAid is a first-of-it’s-kind, on-demand matching portal for the implementation of live, patient-preferential Music Medicine and Therapy services, initially being offered for trauma patients in post-surgical settings. In these perioperative settings, exposure to music, especially patient-preferred music, has been found to reduce anxiety, regulate hemodynamic parameters, improve patient satisfaction, and relieve postoperative pain intensity.*
As emerging research shows that much of the benefit of Music Medicine and Therapy treatments is directly tied to the personal and cultural relevance of the music being offered to the patient, SerenAid was developed as a novel solution to address existing and ingrained inequities in the field. The SerenAid portal allows care staff to quickly and easily order live, on-demand, and most importantly, patient-preferential Music Medicine and Therapy services that fit in seamlessly into each patient’s unique continuum of care.
Developed in conjunction with a dedicated and world-class team of clinical and public health researchers at Stanford and Brown Universities, SerenAid utilizes state of the art communications and automation tools to dramatically reduce the bandwidth burden of existing virtual music medicine services currently imposed on nursing teams, and is conceived from the ground up with the potential to cost-effectively reach patients traditionally denied access to these important interventions due to socio-economic disparities.
*(Kavak Akelma et al., 2020; Liang et al., 2021; Vaajoki et al.,2012).
A patient’s nurse fills out the SerenAid portalVirtual Bedside Concert Request Form on behalf of their patient, including the patient’s preferred musical genre of choice, and a proposed time and date for the concert”
The request for a live, 1-on-1 Virtual Bedside Concert is digitally sent out across the country via SMS and email to a pre-vetted list of professional musicians trained in the patient’s preferred genre of music
Musicians who are available for the proposed Virtual Bedside Concert time can sign up immediately, which automatically creates and sends out a Zoom invitation to both the musician and the patient’s nurse. At the appointed concert time, the nurse helps the patient log on to the Zoom room, and they can all enjoy a 1-on-1 Virtual Bedside Concert.
Wide-spread in-person patient access to Music Medicine is limited for many reasons, including infection concerns, geographic distribution, racial-bias in past efforts, and the slow pace of building scientific consensus around its real-world effects. Our research will rigorously test whether one-on-one, Virtual Bedside Concerts, given remotely by world-class musicians of the patients’ chosen musical preference, can be an effective, accessible, and equitable therapy for inpatients experiencing anxiety, isolation, and pain from trauma and surgery. We believe that this expansion of patient access to a nationwide network of music professionals provides a highly impactful and scalable new tool for nursing care that stands to improve patient outcomes and reduces existing health disparities.
It is my pleasure to express my strongest support forthe R01 research collaboration between Stanford University... and the Amplify Foundation to evaluate the positive effects that virtual bedside concerts can have on patients dealing with pain and anxiety in trauma care settings.
My previous interactions in providing early research direction to Co-Investigator Andrew Janss leads me to believe that this collaboration between the esteemed research team at Stanford University... and the Amplify Foundation will effectively and carefully elucidate important questions about new modalities of music delivery, equitable distribution of care, and the feasibility of providingnurses with a new patient care tool.
