Musical Health Technologies Wins LeadingAge California Innovation Award

Musical Health Technologies Wins LeadingAge California Innovation Award with a Decades-Before-Its Time Idea, Enabling the Mass Distribution of Music as Medicine 

Music has been shown to be one of the most effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.* The unique Lyric Coaching technology embedded in all SingFit solutions was first conceptualized  by an inventor and opera singer in 1960, more than 50 years before it was commercialized. 

In one-to-one sessions with music therapists, Lyric Coaching helped Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to regain her speech after a left hemisphere brain injury in 2011. 

With only 7,000 certified music therapists in the US, up until Musical Health Technologies  digitized Lyric Coaching with their SingFit solutions, access to therapeutic singing had been severely limited. 

As evidenced by people singing from their balconies in Italy during the early days of COVID-19 to the Instagram Live sets from world-renowned DJs, music is being shown to be one of the best and most popular ways to beat social isolation and improve mental health during the pandemic. 

During an online event hosted by entertainment reporter and Alzheimer’s advocate Leeza Gibbons, LeadingAge California, the state’s preeminent advocate for high-quality, nonprofit senior care, awarded MHT their 2020 Innovation prize. 

In a pitch competition with 10 finalists from across the US, companies were judged on the scalability of their innovation along with its ability to reach the most vulnerable older adults and the organization’s ability to respond rapidly to changes in elder care brought on by COVID-19. 

During their pitch, Rachel Francine, Musical Health Technologies Founder and CEO, related to judges how their: 

SingFit PRIME offering is used at 500 senior care communities across the US. 

New SingFit STUDIO solution is allowing Speech Therapists to attain goals that increase the reimbursability of their services for clients,  allowing for additional sessions under Medicare.

SingFit PRIME Time solution, a video version of their SingFit PRIME offering developed for the COVID-19 environment, enables long-term care residents confined to their rooms and closed adult day centers clients to access, active, therapeutic music making through the internet

In her acceptance speech and accompanying blog post, Francine detailed how the core of their SingFit platform was first dreamed up by her father in the early 1960s: 

“The first person I thought of when I was informed that our SingFit solutions had won the Innovation Award was my dad Lou Tubman. My dad was what’s now called a serial entrepreneur, but back in the day we just called him a crazy inventor. That said, my dad was so ahead of his time that one of the many ideas he came up with in his life, one first imagined in 1960, sits at the center of SingFit solutions that won an innovation award in 2020!”

Francine goes on to explain that her father, also a musician, was first inspired to develop the Lyric Coaching technology that now enables someone with dementia to have an instantaneous, engaging singing experience, from the Opera Prompter, a person whose job it was to feed to lyrics of a song to singers during performances. “Dad wanted a technology-based version of the Opera Prompter in the car with him to rehearse but the tech infrastructure did not exist yet. However, he never let go of the idea.” 

Decades later, while attending college for Music Therapy, Francine’s brother, and Musical Health Technologies Chief Clinical Officer, Andy Tubman, discovered that over the ensuing years, the Lyric Coaching concept had also developed into an evidenced-based music therapy practice. 

“Lyric prompting is used, among other things, to help people who’ve lost their ability to speak after a traumatic brain injury or a stroke to regain their ability to talk, as it did for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords,” explains Tubman. However, with only 7,000 music therapists certified to practice in the United States, access to highly beneficial therapy has been limited to the fortunate few who can benefit from singing therapies.

In 2012, the trio, Francine, Tubman and Tubman, joined forces to create Musical Health Technologies, which now mass distributes music as medicine for the first time in history. You can read more about the origins of Musical Health Technologies in Francine’s blog post here: https://bit.ly/3dpOSaX 

About Musical Health Technologies

Musical Health Technologies is a multi-award-winning digital therapeutics company, which opens up access for hundreds of millions of people to the proven neurological, physical and emotional health benefits of music as medicine previously only available through 7,000 music therapists. Musical Health Technologies recently received a warrant investment from AARP and a three-year grant from Glasgow Caledonian University to continue building out further evidence of SingFit’s clinical efficacy. SingFit is also the winner of The USC Medical School Body Computing Prize, The CES Healthy Aging Award, McKnight’s Dignity in Aging Award and The American Telemedicine Association Innovation Award. 

See SingFit in action here: https://vimeo.com/449004342/9df17270a7 or  visit: (web)  www.SingFit.com (twitter) @WeAreSingFit (facebook) @WeAreSingFit (linkedin) https://www.linkedin.com/company/musical-health-technologies/

Contact: Deborah Scarborough

Email: Deborah@SingFit.com

Phone: 805-909-9501

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