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Music-Centred Dementia Care
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Partners

Institutional, clinical, product.

The programme is hosted at UCA and built in partnership with funders, pilot and co-design collaborators, care-record integrators, and aligned policy bodies. The list grows as the programme does — it is not exhaustive.

Host

  • Host institution

    University for the Creative Arts

    MCDC is a research programme at UCA. The programme is led from within UCA and treated here as a standalone research site connected to — not a sub-site of — the university.

Funders

  • Funder — ACT development

    UKRI Zinc Catalyst (Healthy Ageing)

    £60,000 award (2023–2024) via the UKRI Zinc Catalyst Healthy Ageing strand, to Whalley and Brill at UCA, for the development and implementation of the Anticipatory Care Tool.

  • Funder — COGS app

    Innovate UK — Healthy Ageing Programme

    Innovate UK Healthy Ageing Programme funding underpinned the COGS digital Cognitive Stimulation Therapy app co-developed with Memory Matters (completed 2023).

  • Funder — MedTracks study

    NHS Highland SBRI

    Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) funding underpins the ongoing MedTracks music-prompted medication-adherence 30-day study with NHS Highland (2025–).

Clinical and co-design

  • Pilot site; long-running STA adopter · Wrexham, North Wales

    Pendine Park

    70-resident specialist dementia capacity. Hosted the 2019 Memory Tracks pilot (Cunningham et al.) and has since embedded Song-Task Association in daily practice continuously from 2019 to the present — a six-year stretch of sustained research-derived practice change. Will host the planned MCDC framework pilot.

  • Clinical research partner — MedTracks · Scotland

    NHS Highland

    30-day SBRI-funded study of the MedTracks music-prompted medication-adherence app (2025, ongoing). An associated paper from the same study is currently under review.

  • Co-design partner; CST specialists · Plymouth

    Memory Matters

    Plymouth-based dementia-support charity and Cognitive Stimulation Therapy specialists. Co-design workshops and interviews with their staff and clients shaped both the ACT observational question set and the COGS digital-CST app (completed 2023). CEO: Kate Smith.

  • Co-design partner; ACT trial site · Edinburgh

    Lifecare

    Edinburgh dementia-club partner. Hosted a 24-week ACT trial in 2023 (n = 16) during which the algorithm flagged concerning patterns in two participants, triggering GP referrals. Also contributed to the ACT co-design workshops.

Product collaborators

  • Product collaborator — Component 2 of MCDC

    Memory Tracks Ltd

    Develops the Memory Tracks app — the daily-care instrument at the heart of MCDC's passive-monitoring component — and its consumer-facing sibling product MedTracks (music-powered medication-adherence reminders, subject of ongoing NHS Highland research). The collaboration with UCA is a sustained research partnership (not a licence): the 2019 Pendine Park pilot paper was co-authored across both teams, and Stuart Cunningham appears as a named author on the MCDC white paper. Gordon Anderson is Director of Memory Tracks Ltd.

Integrations

  • ACT-API integration — example

    Birdie

    Care-record system listed as an example consumer of the in-development ACT-API. [PLACEHOLDER: confirm partnership status and any others.]

Policy alignment

  • Policy alignment

    Welsh Government

    The planned Pendine Park pilot aligns with the Welsh Government's Dementia Strategy for Wales 2026–2036 (draft for consultation), and with the principles of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014.

Logos and formal partnership statements will be added once each partner’s consent for public listing is confirmed.