Harvard Medical Sleep Project - continued

So, we're into the second development phase of this operation. Now incorporating feedback into a continuously polled database, the software is finally going to take full shape with a more elegant and basic interface. Hopefully, with these changes, the project will come to full fruition and this software can be adapted for use in future research.

Experiments will continue soon, most likely, and hopefully the project can develop more from there. Everyone involved, I'm sure, would like this to morph into something larger.

Sleep Project Progresses

The Sleep Research Project with Harvard is moving along at a clip now. They've started the study, and have begun using the initial design of the application I've created. Here are some words from Andrew Carballeira, project manager on this study.

"No one has done this kind of work in sleep or acoustics, so despite some growing pains, I think we’re on the verge of some fascinating work. Some of the data trends that we already started to see last night were alternately puzzling and fascinating. Onward!"

I'm now working to refine the application, and develop a new GUI, so that any user will be able to carry on testing with the software in future studies.

More on the Harvard Med School Project

Things have been solidifying with the Harvard Medical School project, for which I will be building audio software. The project, as mentioned, centers around the effects of sound in hospitals, from phones, to medical machinery, to hallway ambiance, to low frequency air control systems. My part in it all will consist of creating a piece of software that will be operated by a nurse or technician, to bombard sleeping test subjects with samples of the different noises mentioned, and record many of their physical attributes as they sleep, such as heart rate, breathing rate and certain brain activity.

This project is part of a larger, farther reaching initiative by a collection of scientists, doctors and architects, who are trying to determine certain criteria by which all hospitals should adhere, in order to better serve patient health. Naturally sound plays a significant role, along with light and air quality among other things, in the patient experience, and that is where this specific avenue of the project comes into play.

I'll be posting more info as I get it, along with screen shots of the software as it reaches completion.

Harvard Medical Sound Project

Last Friday, my old friend and colleague, Andy Carballeira (who is now teaching at Berklee, 5 years out...), called me out of the blue after about 2 years of only the semi-occasional myspace contact, to enlist my help on a project he's working on for the Harvard Medical School. It involves testing the effects of hospital noise on sleeping patients, using samples from the hallways of large hospitals in the Northeast, and bombarding sleeping test subjects with those samples at high volume.

The project is an independent grant that Andy has procured, meaning he's got proper funding for a research facility, not to mention the Harvard Med School name to back it up.

I have been commissioned to build the software to playback the audio clips in surround sound, using spatial panning and some other wild tricks to mix up the patients heads. I'll be using Max/MSP to build the interface and software, with a built-in timeline to record changes in the different spatial parameters as they are made by the operating technician. An EEG will record the brain wave fluctuations of the sleeping test-subjects, as the sound effects them.

Should be an interesting project...