For kids with cystic fibrosis (CF), airway clearance therapy is the worst part of their day.

SICK BEATS is the world’s first music-powered airway clearance vest, using the clinically proven modality of soundwave therapy in an awesome audio-powered treatment experience.

The SICK BEATS vest syncs with a smartphone to pull therapeutic 40Hz frequencies from music and send them to the chest. The SICK BEATS experience uses a curated Spotify library of thousands of 40Hz songs. The SICK BEATS profile on Spotify organizes 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.

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There are 30,000 people living in the US with CF—a chronic, life-long, and life-shortening disease, involving the buildup of heavy mucus within the lungs. A primary goal of treatment is to keep the airways clear to avoid serious infection. The current approach to airway clearance is bulky vests that pound the chest until the mucus is loosened and coughed out. These vests are loud, uncomfortable, and expensive ($10K+).

It has been clinically proven that 40Hz soundwaves are as effective as traditional vests (see also Supporting materials). The 40Hz soundwave matches the harmonic resonance of mucus, liquifying hard mucus so it can migrate to larger airways and be coughed out. We needed to apply this proven science to an experience that kids would not only endure but would look forward to.

Identifying 40Hz songs was no easy task—involving a challenging calculation called pitch detection, where we actually predict the shape of soundwaves in each song. We applied a combination of algorithmic solutions, YIN, AMDF, and an AI-based solution—a Recurrent Neural Network—to predict song frequencies. We downloaded every song on Spotify that met our requirements of popular music, clean lyrics, and track length, and allowed the AI-enabled sniffer to listen to songs, picking out ones that fell within the therapeutic range. Those songs were used to build Spotify playlists.

We also updated the vest firmware to preferentially deliver the 40Hz tone for a broader range of input frequencies without distorting the audio quality of the song, enhancing the therapeutic effect of the vest.