SICK BEATS by Woojer is the world’s first music-powered airway clearance vest for cystic fibrosis (CF), using the clinically-proven modality of soundwave therapy (40Hz) to merge the music kids love with the daily treatment they need, all on the Spotify platform.

Working with Woojer, we redesigned their consumer haptic vest to meet the needs of CF treatment—adding additional transducers, optimizing lung placement, and boosting the 40Hz output). The 40Hz soundwave matches the harmonic resonance of mucus, liquifying hard mucus so it can migrate to larger airways and be coughed out. We used an AI-enabled sniffer to search 30 million songs in the Spotify library for therapeutic frequencies, identifying thousands of 40Hz songs for use with the SICK BEATS vest.

We are turning the worst part of these kids’ day into one of the coolest experiences in the world.

The SICK BEATS vest was developed with input on form and function from kids in the CF community, through a partnership with Claire’s Place Foundation, a CF advocacy group. Our medical directors, Drs. Salinas and Lewinter, two respected researchers in pediatric pulmonology, also provided clinical guidance. Our goal was to create a treatment experience kids would look forward to rather than just endure, thereby improving compliance and clinical outcomes.

SICK BEATS syncs with your smartphone and translates the frequencies of the music you’re listening to into powerful soundwaves that penetrate the body to loosen lung mucus so the patient can cough it up.

Working with Woojer, we redesigned their consumer haptic vest to meet the needs of CF treatment—adding additional transducers, optimizing lung placement, and boosting the 40Hz output.

But not every song contains the 40Hz tone. To identify songs with the 40Hz tone, we used an AI-enabled sniffer to search 30 million songs in the Spotify library for therapeutic frequencies, identifying thousands of songs to build a therapeutic song library. The SICK BEATS profile on Spotify organizes these songs into easy-to-access playlists, where kids can discover new music and build their own custom treatment playlists. On SickBeatsVest.com, we utilize the Spotify API to provide a playlist generator, powered by multiple inputs such as mood, musical taste, and treatment length.

A medical device must be studied in a multicenter trial and submitted to the FDA for review and approval before it can be available for sale. Therefore, SICK BEATS is not commercially available, but is accessible, courtesy of Woojer, to the 2000+ families within the Claire’s Place Foundation network.

30,000 people in the US have cystic fibrosis—a life-long and life-shortening disease, involving the buildup of heavy mucus within the lungs. Airways must be kept clear to avoid serious infection.

Current approaches to airway clearance use bulky vests that pound the chest until the mucus is loosened and expelled.