The HeartFM project is selected for King’s MedTech Accelerator’s 2025 cohort. The 6-month part-time programme delivered by the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences (BMEIS) at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering (LIHE) focuses on transforming research innovations into viable healthcare ventures. The programme was launched by £1.5m in funding from Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund in 2023, and graduated its inaugural cohort in February 2025.
There were a total of 70 applicants for this year’s cohort, of which 26 were selected for the accelerator programme. A special feature of the programme starting from 2025 is dedicated support for Digital Health innovation projects, catering to healthcare solutions with a strong digital element.
Music engagement is pervasive and pleasurable. It has profound effects on the body and the mind. Autonomic reactions to music like changes to heart rate and blood pressure can be harnessed to alleviate the global scourge of heart disease, the number one killer, and its foremost risk factor, hypertension. But why and how music works on cardiovascular variables remain mysterious and undissected, limiting its robust and systematic use in medical diagnostics and treatments. The ephemeral quality of music and the highly personalised nature of music reaction makes targeted use of music complex and challenging. Our approach leverages knowledge about music expressivity, the prosody of music communication. Linking expressive music features continuously to cardiovascular measures, we stratify physiological reactions to prosodic structures during music engagement. Autonomic tendencies precipitate cardiovascular disease, and heart disease impacts autonomic response. Our methods use music reaction characteristics for both diagnosis and for personalisation of music-based interventions.
