There are 30,000 people living in the US with cystic fibrosis (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 bulky, loud, uncomfortable, and expensive ($10K+).

It has been clinically proven that 40Hz soundwaves are as effective as traditional vests (see also Supporting Information). We needed to apply this proven science to an experience that kids would not only endure but enjoy.

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

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 want to have, 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.

2,000+ CF families within the Claire’s Place Foundation network have access to the vest—on a rolling basis, free of charge. To date, 20 kids with CF have joined our experience trial of the prototype vest. The product is now in clinical testing to prove efficacy and begin the path to FDA approval.