Music, Computing, and Health: A Roadmap for the Current and Future Roles of Music Technology for Health Care and Well-Being

TLDR

Music, health, and technology have increasingly intersected in recent years to develop music technology for healthcare and well‑being. This article reviews the methods of involved disciplines and outlines how music technology can support person‑centered care, evidence‑based treatments, and large‑scale interdisciplinary research. The authors convened the “Music, Computing, and Health” workshop with experts from music psychology, neuroscience, therapy, information retrieval, technology, medtech, and robotics to discuss best practices and state‑of‑the‑art, then summarized the disciplines’ methods and potential contributions. The paper serves as a resource for researchers applying music‑based computational methods to healthcare, and encourages future work by evaluating current challenges and opportunities across the fields.

Abstract

The fields of music, health, and technology have seen significant interactions in recent years in developing music technology for health care and well-being. In an effort to strengthen the collaboration between the involved disciplines, the workshop “Music, Computing, and Health” was held to discuss best practices and state-of-the-art at the intersection of these areas with researchers from music psychology and neuroscience, music therapy, music information retrieval, music technology, medical technology (medtech), and robotics. Following the discussions at the workshop, this article provides an overview of the different methods of the involved disciplines and their potential contributions to developing music technology for health and well-being. Furthermore, the article summarizes the state of the art in music technology that can be applied in various health scenarios and provides a perspective on challenges and opportunities for developing music technology that (1) supports person-centered care and evidence-based treatments, and (2) contributes to developing standardized, large-scale research on music-based interventions in an interdisciplinary manner. The article provides a resource for those seeking to engage in interdisciplinary research using music-based computational methods to develop technology for health care, and aims to inspire future research directions by evaluating the state of the art with respect to the challenges facing each field.