Designing sound for health and wellbeing in emergency care settings

Medical research and interventions can lead to new discoveries in treating cancer, understanding the human genome or the prevalence of diabetes in emergency department patients. However, practice-based art research in medical settings can also test questions, experiment with ideas and contribute to new knowledge about human health and wellbeing. This article will focus on the sound and emergency medicine project, 'Designing Sound for Health and Wellbeing' as a case study to examine how applied art, music and sound research and interdisciplinary collaborations can benefit hospital communities and engender a practice of non-invasive, non-chemical interventions to relieve patient stress and anxiety. As this project demonstrates, sound art and music does not have to be developed, created and presented for exhibitions and performances alone; it can also have a strategic role in clinical interventions and health care provision.