CareTunes: Turning Patient Vitals into Music

This paper presents CareTunes as a concept to explore musical sonification of patient vitals and the role of music in Intensive Care Units (ICU). In this paper, we first describe the design specifications for the sonification of data in a musical fashion. Secondly, we present two applications for CareTunes in prototype stage and user evaluation studies. The first application regards the ICU nurses’ need to monitor patients from a distance (CareTunes as musical updates for nurses) and second application regards families’ need to connect with their loved in the ICU (CareTunes as musical messages for families). We conclude that music has the potential to represent changes in patient vitals for nurses and emotionally regulate families’ anxieties regarding ICU patient’s condition. Music offers a platform for reutilizing patient data for human-centered solutions