Capstone Innovations: Melody Mover

Just as a favorite tune can get you moving in a morning workout, a new app under development at Carle Illinois College of Medicine sets the pace for patients with Parkinson’s Disease to stay active and engaged, even as their disease progresses. The Melody Mover app uses sensory cues, including music, to set a comfortable walking pace that can help Parkinson’s patients overcome limiting symptoms that make it difficult to remain physically active.

“We hope to provide a digital therapeutic that can improve each user’s ability to walk,” said CI MED physician-innovator Conor Bloomer, who leads the Melody Mover development project, along with classmate Tracy Kao. Parkinson’s Disease is a progressive, debilitating brain disorder that can start slowly but progresses to cause tremors, balance and gait problems, and sluggish movement. The idea for the app came from a Parkinson’s patient Bloomer met during his clinical rotation in neurology. “This patient walked with a metronome, using the beat to overcome his frozen gait. Our innovation takes the metronome solution and makes it more intelligent,” Bloomer said.

Like other activity apps, Melody Mover ‘learns’ with each usage. “Once a patient hits the start button and begins moving, our app begins to detect the cadence of the user’s gait. After a few seconds, it will begin delivering ‘cues’ (a metronome beat, a vibration, or an audio recording) matched to the user’s gait. The user then simply walks to the beat as the app continues to monitor the patient and deliver whatever tempo is best for the patient,” Bloomer explained. He says later iterations of the app will allow the user to specify a preferred playlist of songs and adjust the musical tempo to the desired walking speed.

Melody Mover also includes unique features that allow patients with Parkinson’s disease to connect with others. “We decided our app should be more than just a cue delivery system, but a social space, where users can record and share their walks, creating inspiration for others with each post or finding inspiration for themselves when scrolling through their feed,” Bloomer said.  

The Melody Mover is one of the Capstone Innovations proposed by the future physician innovators in Carle Illinois’ Class of 2024. In the final phase of Carle Illinois’ engineering-based, innovation-oriented curriculum, fourth-year students research a problem identified during their clinical rotations, propose a solution, and then work with a cross-disciplinary team to develop a new prototype or process that will potentially change the practice of medicine and improve patient outcomes. Collaborators on this project include Gulistan Fatima and Asif Merchant (MBA candidates, Gies College of Business), Hyunwoo Kim (Computer Science student), and May Phan (Design student).