Almost half of all elderly people in a care home are suffering from sleeping problems. They have difficulty falling asleep due to the use of medication or suffer from “call and error” behaviour due to diseases such as dementia. Qwiek thinks it has found a solution for this. The health care innovation company from Heerlen comes with a music cushion that makes the connection between music and sleep. It ensures that users fall asleep in a relaxed way.
Now restless ‘night owls’ usually receive medication to continue sleeping. With the Qwiek.snooze Qwiek wants to offer an alternative to support people with sleeping problems to fall asleep peacefully. Tom Frissen, one of the developers, explains how it works: “You place the Qwiek.snooze under your own pillow. When you lie down in bed, the music is played. Through the built-in sensors, the product learns to recognise individual sleeping patterns and translates these into a customised music experience.
The pillow was developed in collaboration with music therapist Annemieke Raven-De Vries. Raven-De Vries has previously devised the music cushion intervention, where individualised music is used to combat night-time unrest and to promote falling asleep. Vilans, a knowledge institution for long-term care, recognises the method as ‘theoretically well-founded’. The Qwiek.snooze was tested in Maastricht and Drachten. The company wants to further test the music cushion in the coming period to develop it further within the hospital care. In the long term, the startup is working on a version for home care.
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