Music Cubes relieve hospital blues

Music Cubes relieve hospital blues

Engaging bored and unwell teenagers is a challenge that most people would baulk at, but not PhD student Samantha Ewart. Samantha has introduced Music Cubes, a new, interactive technology to distract teenagers from hospital medical procedures.

The Music Cubes – small boxes illuminated in different colours – each have a different instrument sound and can work together or alone to build a composition.

Samantha’s pilot study revealed that hospitalised teens find the cubes a welcome distraction, more likely to alleviate boredom than traditional video games and music devices.

"The Music Cubes are unique, and we're finding their novelty and range of interactive uses are really having an effect on the teenagers," Samantha says.

After using the Music Cubes, 10 out of 14 patients showed substantially reduced levels of boredom, and all the patients who participated enjoyed the exercise, with 11 indicating they would like to use the Music Cubes more often.

"I found that the Music Cubes were received very positively by young people in hospital because they could either interact individually or in a group, which can help promote wellbeing through socialisation," Samantha says.

Building on the success of the Music Cubes, Samantha is already planning to develop more devices that combine music and technology, including interactive music balls and smart phone games.

Together with supervisors Garth Paine and Amanda Third, Samantha is also looking at extending the capabilities of Music Cubes so that patients can record their compositions, potentially leaving hospital with their own album.
"We hope that the work we will be conducting for the rest of my PhD will make permanent changes to the wellbeing of patients in hospital."

Samantha’s project will continue at The Children’s Hospital in Westmead during school holidays throughout 2012.