Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] Mindy Peterson. And this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the ways music makes our lives better and spotlight the resources you can use to enhance your life with music. Today, we’re talking about exciting tools that are available from a company in the music health technology space. I learned about this company recently through the Sounds Good Substack by Rob Marshall. Shout out to Rob! When I saw his description of Coro Health’s latest research and offerings, I was intrigued and immediately contacted them for an interview. Joining me today from Austin, Texas, is the co-founder and CEO of Coro Health, David Shofman. David is active in this intersection of music, neuroscience and health care. I am thrilled to have him here today to tell us about Coro Health and the tools that it offers. Welcome to Enhance Life with music, David.
David Schofman: [00:00:56] Thanks, Mindy. I appreciate you having me very much.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:59] Well, looking forward to our conversation starting out. Just give us your elevator pitch for Coro Health. What is it? How do you describe it to people who aren’t familiar with it?
David Schofman: [00:01:10] So, um, I guess I’ll give you a little background on the company first, if that would be useful. So I started the company a long time ago – we just had our 15 year anniversary – in 2008, and really it was a catalyst of a couple of things that came together. Um, my mom’s a hospice nurse and was for for 30 or 40 years, and was always talking about how she leveraged the power of music as part of her care plan. And I’m dating myself and her, but, you know, she would. She was a traveling hospice nurse. And so she would go to homes and she would carry stacks of of CDs. And back then Sony Discman players for those in the audience that are old enough to remember that. And and she would ask him questions and she would leave him music, she would play music, she would sing with them. And and then when they would pass, she would pick up her music and go to the next patient. And I’d heard that those stories obviously for years and years and. And then in around 2006 or 7, our, um, our middle daughter started developing some challenges and we realized she had a rare chromosomal disorder and was struggling with with speech. And I stumbled truly across this whole field called music therapy and really didn’t even know what it was. And we’re we’re lucky enough and blessed enough to be in Austin, Texas, which is, besides Nashville, probably the largest.
David Schofman: [00:02:34] We call ourselves the music capital of the world. But that might be a little bit of a stretch. But, um, and and here in Austin, there was there was a number of music therapists and designers that were kind of world renowned. And so as parents, when you’re looking for, you know, ways to help your child, you know, we were looking at everything. So we decided what the heck, we’ll put her in one of these music therapy programs and see what happened. And again, very long story short on that is that we started seeing some pretty remarkable progress with her engaging and physically and mentally and from a speaking standpoint with the music. And we were like, Holy cow. And this is really interesting. And so, you know, I’m a serial entrepreneur and have done six different companies now and, and also an amateur musician. And so it kind of just the business part of my brain and also kind of the heart strings, you know, said one day, you know, there’s this is an amazing field that’s so interesting. I started doing homework and research on the power of music and the brain and talking with neuroscientists and different music therapists and realized, this is great, but, you know, it’s being totally frank. It’s it’s not a great business model. And I mean that by there’s just not enough music therapists in the world to be able to service the need.
David Schofman: [00:03:51] And although they have all this amazing research and all the great work they do, it’s expensive and it’s just not available. And so we kind of sat down with a team of, like I said, of music therapists and music designers and technologists and said, there’s got to be a better way. And can we take the knowledge and the research that’s been done and build prescriptive music programs? And so that’s really the kind of the long answer to your initial question is that music first, which is our product was really designed to be, you know, the tool that caregivers use first, you know, before pharmacological or other types of intervention to try and ease, you know, whether it’s pain or agitation or depression or stimulate appetite or all the different things that our programs, you know, work on to, you know, to utilize that as a tool for them when a music therapist is not available. I mean, we always believe that first and foremost, that’s the best way to go. We’re never going to replace them. Obviously, live music one on one with an individual when you’re seeing their their emotional and physiological responses is always the best, but it’s simply not available. And so when they’re when they’re not available, we wanted a tool that was simple for them to use. And so that’s kind of how it was all born. Um, in the beginning.
Mindy Peterson: [00:05:08] Well, you sort of answered one of my questions too, which was going to be Why Coro Health? Why do you see a need for this company and the products? And yeah, you’re really interesting. Answer that. And I do hear what you said all the time that there just aren’t enough music therapists for the need. And it’s great that we’re seeing a demand and a need for it. And people it’s becoming a little bit more mainstream. And I think one factor in component in that is there’s so much great research that is coming out. I mean, that that field really is exploding in terms of demonstrating scientifically the efficacy of music therapy. And the functional MRIs are really feeding into a large growth of that. So that’s great. Hopefully we’ll see more and more, uh, music therapists coming into the field. But that’s great that your product is sort of filling a little bit of a void whether people don’t have access to music therapists or as you mentioned, it’s expensive. Insurance doesn’t always cover it. In fact, often doesn’t cover it. But I feel like that’s changing also. Um, so tell us a little bit about music first, and then I also want to talk about who it’s for, because I know you do a lot of work with elderly populations, but I think you also make this available for other demographics as well. But tell us a little bit about music. First, that product.
David Schofman: [00:06:33] Right. Yeah. So it’s um, you know, everything we do is using music to drive a very specific outcome. And so if you think about it kind of at a high level, the hierarchy of what we do, we look at wake, sleep, energy and relax. It’s kind of our core four tenants. And then based on the answers to a series of questions that we ask each each patient or resident, we take that information along with their genre and their style preferences. And we use machine learning and AI and, you know, years, 15 years of doing this to dynamically generate a playlist for them that is specifically catered to drive that outcome, and kind of the what makes us really unique from an intellectual property and a patent standpoint is that we’ve developed a process where we look at approximately 20 to 30 different characteristics of each song. We call it the musical DNA. We break down the song into different characteristics, like obviously look at tempo and instrumentation, vocalization, brightness, key, speechiness balance, and we numerically categorize all of those songs, and then we put them in a very specific order in order to drive a very specific outcome. So I know our listeners are not seeing what I’m doing with my hands, so I’ll try to describe it. Uh, Uh, with not being visual. But if you think about an energy program and you think about a graph, um, if that energy program will start with a song that’s kind of in the lower left hand corner that graph and slowly increase up into the right as each song progresses.
David Schofman: [00:08:26] We call that a musical feature slope. So the feature slope increases if you’re trying to take somebody from a certain position of low energy to a certain position of high energy, it’s going to go up and to the right. Conversely, if you’re trying to relax somebody and they’re in an agitated state, you would start in the upper left hand corner of the graph and you would move it down into the right. So it seems pretty logical. But there’s a lot of obviously science that goes behind that to take all of the different songs and all of the different genres and styles and break them down in order to order them, uh, properly in sequence to drive a specific outcome. And so we use that algorithm, you know, for wake, sleep, energy relaxed. We also do it for mood stimulation, appetite pain management, um, you know, increasing movement, you know, all of the different outcomes that we look at when we’re doing a prescriptive music program for, for an individual. And so that’s kind of we call it the science behind the soundtrack of how we of how we build it. And so that tool is used by caregivers and patients slash residents themselves. So in the case of to your question about kind of the environments that we serve. So we’ve got a broad range. So, you know, you mentioned hospital acute care market. We’ve got about 200 hospitals. Um, and in hospital environment generally, not always I mentioned the story about my father in law, who recently had a heart attack and was in the hospital so wasn’t able to kind of manage a TV or a device on their own.
David Schofman: [00:10:05] So in even in an acute care setting, they can use the program by, by themselves, you know, for wake, sleep, energy, relax obviously. Or a caregiver can go through in the case of my mother in law, you know, she would answer the questions on behalf of my father in law because she knew what was going on with him. She knew his style and genre preferences. And then we would play both relax and energy programs depending on what he was doing. So when we were preparing him for physical therapy, three times a day as he’s recovering from his heart attack 30 minutes before we play an energy program for him, you know, and he likes show tunes. So that’s what we were playing show tunes, energy program for him and to try to get his heart rate up, his respiratory rate up, so that when they came to get him for physical therapy, he was in a good place for that and ready for that. And we had energized him. And, you know, the opposite would be true. Obviously, at night, you know, he suffers from some brain damage from from the from the heart attack and has a little bit of Sundowning syndrome. And so 3 or 4 in the afternoon every day he would get really agitated. And, you know, totally being frank, you know, they would want to, you know, give him Ativan and give him Haldol and to try to calm him down.
David Schofman: [00:11:14] And my mother in law was, you know, completely against that. But sometimes, you know, he was so developed, such an acute challenge that they had to and so same thing We would play the relax programs for him starting at about 2 or 3:00, to try to limit or reduce or leave completely the need for an Ativan or a Haldol or some sort of cocktail that they were going to bring him, you know, in that kind of situation. And so, um, you know, real life, I’m going through this in real time over the last few weeks. As you know, we spoke before before we got on the phone. Right. And, um, so, you know, that’s a real life. So that’s in a hospital setting. Then we also serve, as you mentioned, in kind of our core. And where we started foundationally was in long term care. And so we’re in about 6000 long term care communities all around the country, uh, focused in North America only. And so inside of long term care, you’ve got hospice, you’ve got independent, you’ve got assisted, you’ve got memory skilled and kind of, um, respite care. Right. And so in those environments, um, very similar to what I was talking about in the acute care market. Um, those are either residents slash patient led and or we have relationships with a lot of engagement content providers that actually have devices kind of next to the bedside that are delivering, you know, they’re delivering TV, they’re delivering menus, they’re delivering entertainment.
David Schofman: [00:12:41] And we have we’ve kind of become the default therapeutic music and faith programming for them. And so they will schedule that content to come on automatically at certain times of day for certain residents based on certain conditions. So memory care is kind of where we started in long term care. You know, I mentioned earlier, my father in law, Sundowning, this is a real issue for caregivers. I mean, patients get real agitated and confused. And so, you know, we have very specific programs for sundowning that we play or recommend that are played every day around 3 or 4:00. And it does a couple of things. One is it helps just in general, set the tone if you’ve spent any time in a memory care locked unit. Um, you know, those can be kind of all over the board as far as what you’re getting, as far as you know, what residents are acting like and what their mental acuity is. And, um, again, this these afternoons are kind of witching hour. And so playing our sundowning programs, you know, helps with that. It also becomes very Pavlovian for the residents because they know when they hear certain programs at certain times of the day, it triggers certain events. And so, yeah, it’s kind of funny, actually, because kind of a side note here, over the years, um, you know, we we don’t get complaints very often about any of the content that we play. We obviously work very hard at that. The number one complaint we get from caregivers is, oh my gosh, if I have to listen to this same playlist one more day, you know, I’m going to and I’m like, I’m like, due respect, Mr.
David Schofman: [00:14:12] or Mrs. Caregiver, it’s not about you and your residents don’t remember that they heard that yesterday. Or if they do subconsciously they know it’s dinnertime, right? Or they know it’s an activity time. And so again, it becomes a very Pavlovian. So in memory care, we’re repeating a lot of different programs that we’ve, you know, we’ve done clinical trials on. And we know that work, you know, to reduce agitation that help increase, you know, another really confusing part of memory care is dinnertime. Breakfast time, lunch time feeding. Right. Um, and, you know, the life of a caregiver is basically, you know, go to Mindy’s room, get her up and ready for, for a meal, you know, which. And that is a process in itself. Transfer that individual to the dining room and then, you know, wait for the food to be arrived and then go and get David. Right. Well, in the time that they go and get David, Mindy often says, I’m out of here and gets up. And so it’s this carousel, right? So but if we have music that’s playing and we’ve seen this, you know, very a lot of our customers have done studies around this. We’ve never done a formal clinical trial in this specific point. We’ve done it on others, but that the music will help them stay there and stay engaged and eat and.
Mindy Peterson: [00:15:23] Yeah, provide some structure for.
David Schofman: [00:15:25] Them. Structure. Exactly. I said, well said. So anyway, lots of different, um, environments that we use the product and use cases for different benefits for it. So long answer to your question, but hopefully.
Mindy Peterson: [00:15:38] Yeah. Yeah. Well this algorithm tool that you use I think it’s a patented product called Music Prescription Builder. Right?
David Schofman: [00:15:46] Yes.
Mindy Peterson: [00:15:46] Correct. Which is is it’s really cool. I mean, you have a whole team of music therapists that you work with, music designers, neuroscientists who all have worked to create this tool. You’ve also done a lot of research on this product and this whole process. Tell us a little bit about the research. I mean, these are evidence based products. Tell us a little bit about the research, the clinical trials that you’ve done and that are ongoing. Yeah.
David Schofman: [00:16:12] So we’ve worked a lot with Doctor Peter Jannotta at the UC Davis Mind and Brain Center. And Doctor Jannotta is kind of our lead researcher and initially did our first clinical trial work. Um, gosh, going back to 2010 or 2012. And we were focused specifically on individuals with cognitive impairment and reducing agitation and depression in those individuals across, um, you know, multiple sites and multiple individuals and, and, um, you know, it’s interesting. I’ll kind of take a step back and I’ll finish that story, I promise. But but what we realized when we took the product to market, Mindy, was that, you know, people were like, yeah, we understand the power of music, but we’ve got a radio or, you know, we understand music, but we’ve got CDs going back to when we were, aw, freaking eight tracks basically when we started. But, you know, we’ve got music, we’ve got it on the TV, we got it, whatever. And, um, what we realized is that, you know, when we launched and we started testing in long term care, we got all this unbelievable anecdotal feedback. You know, people are like, this is incredible. And, you know, we’re not we’re not administering as many drugs and people are eating more. And, you know, agitations down in the evenings, all these things.
David Schofman: [00:17:32] But they were like, that’s all great. But, you know, without clinical evidence, you know, we’re just not going to pay for it. I mean, that’s basically what it came down to. And so we were like, okay, well, we know this works, so we have to go out and prove it. And so, you know, doing clinical trials is extremely time consuming and expensive. Um, but it was an investment that we had to make and we continue to make. And it’s part of our journey. You know, we have to continue to get better and do this. So our initial, you know, clinicals that we kicked off, you know, um, it was we knew what the results were going to be. But you know, we had to see it and we had to document it. And so, you know, we showed remarkable results, like 54% reductions in agitation and depression. And, you know, had that published in the Journal of Music and Medicine and, you know, obviously peer reviewed published. And since that time and that so that really put us on the map. People were like, Holy cow. Um, this really works. You know, I can justify to my boss, you know, spending money for this, really, at the end of the day is what it is too. And, um.
Mindy Peterson: [00:18:30] Well, it’s probably helpful for insurance coverage and reimbursement, too.
David Schofman: [00:18:33] It is. And it’s, you know, you mentioned early on in your opening, you know, about insurance. And, you know, we should come back to that. But that’s a whole that’s a whole different thing. Is it? Yeah. It requires an enormous amount of research. And it is, you know, thankfully catching up with what consumer demand is and what the research already shows is there. Um, but, you know, getting, you know, the insurance folks to, to reimburse and write a check is never easy, right. And especially something that feels anecdotal. And, you know, you know, people just don’t get it or they think it’s a free product. And so, you know, it works. But anyway, back to the research. So we’ve we’ve done, you know, our kind of phase one clinical trials. We’ve done an enormous amount of clinical studies with customers over the years, you know, showing these increases in appetite that I talked about, you know, showing, you know, decreasing and wandering and activities and increased participation and activities. And so we embarked about a year and a half ago on kind of the next phase, which is our, you know, a fast track phase two clinical trial with support of the NIH. And so we’ve been working through that process right now. And and what we’re really going to be focused on here is the next generation of our music prescription builder. And seeing that it works better than the first one did, because we’re constantly we have more data, we have more machine learning. We have AI tools now that we just didn’t have in 2012. And so, you know, we again, we know it works better, but we have to prove that it works better. So we’ve got to prove that foundation. We’re also going to focus. So individually with individuals with cognitive impairment will be focusing once again on agitation and depression and trying to increase those scores even better than we did a decade ago. We’re also which.
Mindy Peterson: [00:20:21] Was great even then. Right, decreasing up to 54% of agitation in Nebraska.
David Schofman: [00:20:28] It was insane. And we think we can do we think we can do even better, to be honest with you. So. Okay. Um, yeah, we just think the programs are better now. And, um, so there’s that piece and then we’re also focusing a lot more on dining because we have so much anecdotal evidence on the dining programs. And again, think about that energy and relax again what we’re doing in dining. So very specific music to a very specific tempo, um, that we’re trying to help people with staying put and also, you know, continuing to eat and also helping with digestion And once again a breakfast program would be similar feature slope to an energy program and a dining program would be finished. Would be similar to relax program where we’re not only trying to keep them engaged in eating, but also trying to get them mentally prepared either for the day or for the end of the day. So we have very specific programs. And so we hear and to be honest with you, our dining programs are our most popular programs played as far as pure MP3’s downloaded and streamed per month. There’s more dining that our customers use than anything else. So we’re like, okay, the customer, the customer is telling us, this really works. We need to go out and prove that we’ve got the best dining programs on the market, because there’s a whole nother market that we haven’t even gone after, right? Which is, you know, like food, hospitality and lots of other areas.
David Schofman: [00:21:49] So, so kind of first phase of first phase of the phase two is, um, agitation, depression with people with, with cognitive impairment. The second kind of, you know, uh, parallel path with that is dining. And then the third, which is really important to the NIH, is reducing caregiver burden. And so that’s a big one, right. It’s got to check that box is be able to show these caregivers as we know, are understaffed and underpaid. And if they can use music as a as a tool, they can use our tool to make their life easier and conversely, then translate to making the patient’s life easier and better, then that’s a huge win. So those are the three kind of pillars that we’re going after in this next phase. And it’s a you know, it’s a $2.5 million two year study. It’s going to be by our research. I don’t know that this is 100% fact, but by our research, it will be the most comprehensive study ever done in this field on those specific areas. Right. Nobody that we know has ever done this kind of research before.
Mindy Peterson: [00:22:50] Wow. Well, and speaking of caregivers, that’s another area where we have a shortage of them. And so if we can reduce burnout, right? I mean, that’s a win win for everybody. And as you’re talking about this dining and sundowning, I’m just thinking of my experience as a young parent. I don’t know if there’s an equivalent sundowning with infants, but I feel like I feel like there is I feel like we experienced it because I remember late afternoon, like without fail, our firstborn would just get fussy and, you know, cry for no reason. And I remember the Baby Einstein videos.
David Schofman: [00:23:32] Of.
Mindy Peterson: [00:23:32] Course. And since then, I know there’s been additional research that sort of discounted the original claims that was behind Baby Einstein products. But I’m here to tell you, I don’t care about that, because I’m here to tell you those works like a magic for my daughter. And as soon as she would start doing it was around the time we were just trying to get dinner ready. I would put her in front of that and it was just like magic. I mean, she would just stop crying. She was just mesmerized and so we could make dinner. And then it made the dinner experience so much better because she was happy and content. I was happy and content. Right. You know, we were going into it, not in this frazzled state of irritation and angst, but going into it, feeling good and feeling content, you know? Right.
David Schofman: [00:24:25] And a lot of those programs, you know, talking about, you know, I mean, the parallels between, um, you know, as we age and when we’re born, as we all know, are very similar, right? You know, and so, you know, it, um, it’s very much child like behavior when you get older. Um, you know, and so, you know, that same kind of Pavlovian, you know, reference that I made earlier on Sundowning is was absolutely true. You know, I have three girls when we were, you know, doing the same thing growing up. I mean, it was in raising them it, um, those programs, you know, and the consistency of those programs around the time of day and what was going on. I mean, it makes a ton of sense, right? I mean, it’s it’s the same thing.
Mindy Peterson: [00:25:07] Sure. Well, and I can see the positive impact on your programs for the patients, the residents, also for the caregivers. And then I just think about other people who are in that environment. My grandparents all died quite young, but I have very vivid memories of visiting some of them in nursing homes. One of them, my grandfather, did have Alzheimer’s and it was not a pleasant experience. It was it was, uh, it was creepy. It was scary going in there. And you had, um, other residents who were screaming and banging on highchair trays with wooden spoons and wearing bibs. And as a little kid, it really freaked me out, And I can imagine if you have appropriately selected music that’s playing, it’s not only calming the residents and their caregivers, which influences the experience for visitors, but just the music itself would influence the visitor. You know, when you think of kids coming in to visit relatives, right. Um, you know, that would make a whole world of difference and it would make the experience more positive, and it would sort of create a bit of a sonic memory that those kids would have associated with the grandparents. So after their passing, you know, when you hear those songs that would remind you of visits with Grandma and grandpa and hopefully be a much more positive memory than what mine were. So I think there’s just a lot of layers of positivity and benefit with your product. Tell us about I know you have a few other products. There’s Sing Along, Cure Radio and Faith first. Tell us a little bit about those. And then I want to hear about the availability of all these products.
David Schofman: [00:26:54] Right. No thank you. And just adding to to to your comment really quick about the environments. I mean, you know, it’s um, my mom told me when I got into this space, she said, you know, you’re going to see a side of the world she’s talking about, especially Medicare and Medicaid. You know, uh, state and federally funded, you know, skilled nursing communities. You know, private pay is a little different, but but, you know, she said, you’re going to see a side of the world that’s, you know, going to probably change the way you think about, you know, your elders and what, you know, life in the US especially, and how we treat our elders and the environments that they go into. I mean, these are some of them. I mean, you know, we’re in 6000 and there’s some that, you know, I want to go live in right now right there. So yeah, but there are there, there are others that you know that are rough and, um, it’s it’s a tough environment. And when you go in there and like you said, you hear screaming, you hear yelling, the smell is, is usually overwhelming to, um, you know, to to be able to bring some joy and some consistency in those environments, you know, is why we do what we do. You know, I mean, it changes everything. And it’s so frustrating to us at the same time because it’s something so simple, you know, and something so inexpensive. So, yeah, it’s just it’s it’s silly. So, um, transitioning to your last question is, you know, one of the things that we learned over the years of writing the business is that, you know, we had a great product that was focused on therapeutic outcomes in our wake sleep, energy, relaxing our music first program.
David Schofman: [00:28:27] But, you know, we had a lot of customers that said, however, you know, that’s great, but we still have more entertainment needs for music as well. And so, you know, would you know, your product doesn’t do everything for us. It’s just a piece. And we want one stop shop, basically. And so, you know, I fought that for years because I’m like, we’re not a musical entertainment company. That’s not what we do. And then I realized, you know, music is I use Pandora, I use Spotify. So I was a hypocrite. You know, I use that myself. I don’t just use our own product. You know, I do have a need for just going out and playing top 40 and listening to what’s going on. And, you know, I listen to it whether I want to or not with three teenage daughters. But, um, you know, we all have uh, and so, so we launched two other products, Care Radio and, and sing along to really try and round out the offering for everybody. And, um, so care radio is is a genre based entertainment platform, very much like an XM radio or whatever, and playing hits from the 1920s through to today. We do use some of our algorithmic formulas on playing certain types of programs certain times of day, but it’s not as prescriptive as what you would find on the music first side, so it really just covers the gaps in between.
David Schofman: [00:29:41] Also allows them to have music they’re playing in common areas and which makes sense. And so that’s really what Care Radio is. And then Sing along was really birthed or born. Excuse me born from you know again requests from customers on. You know, we’re sitting we’re doing groups and these are activity professionals generally that are working in group settings of, you know, we bring in disc jockeys and we bring in karaoke singers, you know, once a week or twice a month or whatever. But, you know, can you provide us with that kind of program so we can do it more often? Again, it’d be great to always have somebody in person, but it’s expensive and and not easy to coordinate and not available everywhere. And so and so that’s why we did the sing along process. So we’ve got thousands and thousands of sing along programs, you know, specifically catered, you know, mostly towards long term care. Uh, more so than you would see in an acute care. You’re not going to probably see someone who just had their kidneys taken out, uh, you know, belting karaoke and hospital beds. But it’s really designed more for groups and long term care, you know, independent, assisted, skilled, all of those areas where they bring individuals together 3 or 4 times and they’re just looking for activities to do.
David Schofman: [00:30:47] And so that’s where Sing Along came from. And the last point I’ll make on that for transitioning to the faith, is that another big part of what we do, which we kind of fell into, to be honest with you, was covering all of the music licensing for all of our partners. And so music licensing is extremely expensive and required regulated obviously, and also not as well executed upon maybe is the nicest way to say it. In other words, not everybody’s in compliance and we find that and most of most of the long term care communities we go into are not paying the proper licensing that they should be. And so they’re subject to fines. And ASCAP, BMI, cSAC, the pros have gotten more aggressive in the last 4 or 5 years. They used to just kind of look the other way, you know, it’s bad press to, you know, give a fine to grandma or grandpa, but the dollars are in the billions now. And so they’re, you know, they’re starting to to scratch that industry a little bit and say, look, you got to start paying up. Well, it’s, you know, it’s anywhere from 2000 to $8000 a year to cover all the pros for a long term care community, depending on number of beds that you have and number of events that you have and everything. So it’s really expensive. So our customers were asking us to cover all their licensing for them. So if they standardize on it. So to do that we had to have a full array.
David Schofman: [00:32:06] We had to have therapeutic music. We had to have care radio, we had to have it all. And so now we have a complete solution. We can cover all their music licensing. So that’s another another reason why we did it. So moving on to the faith first product. So this um, this has been, um, probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life, to be honest with you. So we started Faith first, you know, over a decade ago because back when we launched the company again, I’m dating myself. There was no streaming. And so, um, you know, we had hardware in a room. You know, we had a computer in every room with speakers. We had cat5 cable running from a nurse’s station into every room. We had our caregivers taking music intake forms and faxing them to us. And we were building programs, sending them thumb drives, and they were loading them and playing them. I mean, again, I’m really dating myself, so but we had all this hardware infrastructure at the time, we had 5 or 600 locations and they were like, you know, we ask our customers, what else can we provide you? We’ve got this box in the room that provides audio content. And we did a survey. And anyway, resounding came back to us. As you know, we need spiritual support. I mean, we have we have no spiritual support. We have, you know, maybe we have, you know, a couple of volunteers, you know, that come in if we’re lucky.
David Schofman: [00:33:27] We have some pastoral care, but they’re basically just walking around doing last rites. They’re not able to engage in individuals and really provide them full spiritual support. So I, you know, being kind of ignorant and arrogant as I can have a tendency to be, I was like, oh, this will be easy. We’ll just, uh, you know, call up Joe Olsteen and throw some stuff up there and everybody will be happy. Right? So this will be real easy. So, uh, not exactly. So, um, the the opportunity. I’ll start with that before I get into the challenge. The opportunity with faith first and again, same name, same philosophical, uh, meaning behind it. Use the faith first. You know, when you can versus another type of intervention is especially those individuals that are in long term care and being totally blunt or in the last chapter of their lives often, um, you know, looking for meaningful spiritual support is very important. And just like music therapists, you know, like I said, spiritual support individuals are few and far between. And then those that are even there are, you know, generally and I mean this out of all due respect, but they’re generally very biased in one spiritual or religious belief. They’re Christians, they’re Jews, they’re they’re Islamic, they’re Native American, you know. And so it’s not fair for them to go into a community and try to support, you know, seven, eight, nine different denominations of faith. It’s just impossible. It’s an impossible. You’re asking you’re asking the candy striper, you know, to come in and support someone who’s a Buddhist.
David Schofman: [00:34:56] It’s just not going to happen most of the time. Right. And so they needed a tool to. And so that’s why we created faith first. And like I said, it’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done and continues to be because it is a, you know, living, breathing, you know, uh, it’s about, you know, thousand hours of video content across Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism, Muslim, Native American and general spirituality. And within that we cover, you know, illness and dying, you know, grief, loss and isolation, transition and aging, life meaning and purpose, you know, Bible studies, worship services, weekly mass. I mean, it goes on and on and on. And, uh, and kind of the last thing I’ll say on that is, is, you know, how do we curate that? And we have, uh, a team of, um, we call it a wisdom council, which is nurses, doctors, activity directors, clergy, spiritual care providers and board certified chaplains that all curate and approve all of our programming. So, um, it’s a it’s a beast. And by the way, music is a really big part of that, as you would imagine. So all all the hymns and all the and the chanting and the hymns and spiritual content that goes along with that, uh, for each spiritual and religious belief is, uh, so music’s a of, you know, I probably should have led with that, but that weaves into all of our spiritual programming.
Mindy Peterson: [00:36:17] Wow. Well, tell us about what facilities and individuals can access your product. Is this just for facilities? Can individuals purchase those these different products? Yeah.
David Schofman: [00:36:29] So we focus, you know, specifically on on hospitals and long term care communities that we, we sell to, we don’t sell to any individuals today. And it’s um, it’s something that we stuck our toe in years ago and candidly, um, struggled with just because the resources required to compete with a, the big music streaming services are a bit overwhelming and mostly the reason why we don’t do it. Again, being totally transparent is that the licensing costs are completely different for individuals versus it is for selling to a business. And it’s just it’s just for a company our size, it’s cost prohibitive for us to do it. I would love to do it. It’s all on the roadmap someday, but, um, it’s just cost prohibitive for us to do it today. So what we’d like to do is license our technology to somebody that that did have it. And that’s kind of the way I’m pursuing that.
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:21] Sure. One thing that I love about what you’re doing is you have identified some situations where collaboration is possible, and you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You’ve partnered with seven different companies, I think, on additional content for engagement, and all of it’s gone on to a single platform called quilt. He tells just a little bit about your partnership with quilt. Yeah.
David Schofman: [00:37:48] So so the company itself is called the Engagement Bundle and quilt is the the app that we use to deliver that content. But the engagement bundle was born out of a bunch of my peers that are selling content into the long term care industry. And, um, we all kind of were bumping up against each other all the time. You know, maybe you call a frenemies or whatever, you know, we’re fighting for the same fighting for the same budgets. Um, you know, selling to the same people as far as, you know, usually activity professionals, executive directors, you know, wellness people and covering kind of the seven different dimensions of wellness. And, you know, we have faith and obviously with us and music with us. And then we have fitness partners, we have travel partners, we have remnants therapy. You know, we have curiosity you which does, you know, lectures from major universities and professors all over the world. And so anyway, we were always bumping up against each other. All of our products were basically priced at the same thing we’re all selling. And we were like, we, you know, myself and and the founders at Spyro 100 who do the fitness, you know, got together one day and we said, this is ridiculous. Like we’re all, you know, we kind of had a support group where we would have a call every two weeks and we would get together and we would talk about, you know, who we’re selling to.
David Schofman: [00:39:05] And we were sharing all this information and anyway, and it was just like, um, we need to work together. So long story short on that. Is the engagement bundle pulled together, you know, today what is seven and soon will be 12 or 15 of the best content providers in the long term care industry. Then we partnered with quilt as a technology partner to bring it all together with a single sign on. So we have packages that communities can buy so they can get all of the content single sign on, device agnostic interface. You know, whether it’s a web or an app or whatever. And and they get access to all the best content partners in the industry. So we’re super excited about it. We have a lot of big news coming in the months to come. Uh, on big, big, big partnerships that we’re doing because it’s a one stop shop for for long term care. And they just makes a ton of sense because they’re like, I don’t have to mess with seven different vendors and seven different logins and seven.
Mindy Peterson: [00:39:59] Oh yeah, I was just going to say seven different passwords. Oh.
David Schofman: [00:40:02] And you know, turnover in that industry is so high that it’s just like mhm.
Mindy Peterson: [00:40:07] Sure. That sounds fabulous. And I just think of so many current trends that um, are so relevant to what you’re doing in terms of I mean, we already mentioned the research that’s exploding. That really validates the efficacy of these types of therapies. But also you have an aging population. You have trends toward holistic wellness, where people are really interested in that and interested in interventions that are non-pharmacological if they’re going to work, you know, or even just mitigate the reliance on meds or decrease the reliance on meds or reduce the dosage. You have alternative forms of care that are just becoming more widely accepted and requested. You have movement in the insurance industry toward reimbursement, which I’d love to hear more about, but I know we’re kind of we’re already over and just kind of that, uh, movement toward personalized medicine to where your prescription builder makes it easy for you to get your personalized music. Depending on what your needs are, what the desired outcomes are, what your preference musical preferences are, and all that kind of thing. So pretty exciting what you’re doing. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.
David Schofman: [00:41:22] No, we’re, uh. Yeah, we’re 15 years young, and it still feels like we’re on first base sometimes. We’ve got got a long way to go still, but, you know, there’s a lot of passion behind this. And I’ve had the same team for this entire 15 years. It’s really about it. And yeah, we work really hard and it’s, you know, it’s a grind, but it’s, you know, we get so much out of it, you know, I mean, we hear these stories every day, you know, that come in and these testimonials that are unsolicited that come in and, you know, especially when we onboard a community or a hospital the first couple of weeks, I mean, people are just, like, overwhelmed and oh, wow. Yeah, I could go on for hours on all the stories, but, um, yeah, yeah, I’m.
Mindy Peterson: [00:42:04] Sure those are really rewarding.
David Schofman: [00:42:06] They are. And that’s what that’s what keeps us going every day and keeps us driving. And we’re very passionate about what we do. You have to be sure.
Mindy Peterson: [00:42:14] Well, there will be links in the show notes for sure to your website, which has some great resources on there. I’ll just point out you have a FAQ section that has lots of great info on using your products on various devices, including voice assistants like Alexa, uh, that your clinical trial results and other relevant research is on your website. Uh, you have a newsletter. Are there any other resources that you want listeners to be aware of?
David Schofman: [00:42:42] No. I mean, you know, follow us on social media. We’re really strong there. We do a lot on Instagram. We do a lot on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter. But Instagram’s kind of the biggest one that we the biggest platform. So following us on on Instagram at Coro Health it would be great. Yeah I mean that’s that’s we post research and stories and testimonials and stuff there all the time. So.
Mindy Peterson: [00:43:04] Great. Well, this has been fascinating, David. I’m sure we could keep talking, but I’m going to have you close us out here. As you know, I have my guests close our conversation with a musical ending, a coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. Do you have a song or story you can close us out with today?
David Schofman: [00:43:24] Yeah, I think, you know, one of the the tipping points for me when we were first getting started and I told you all the all the technology or lack of um, was we were installing a hardware system in a, in a memory care community, and there was a woman named Elizabeth that was just following me around everywhere I went. She didn’t she was nonverbal, and she hadn’t spoken in like a year and a half or two years. And she was just super curious about what I was doing, you know, installing this box and speakers and all of this stuff. And it was actually at the nurses station, and we hadn’t even gotten into the rooms yet. And so, as I told you, we’re running Cat five back to the nurse station and had some we were doing. Testing. And so I, you know, radioed up to the folks at the in the control room and I said, hey, just test a song here and make sure it’s working. And so they piped in a Frank Sinatra song and it started playing. And Elizabeth, who’s like, standing six inches behind me, she like I said, she was following me around all day long, so curious. She just starts belting out singing. And, um, I didn’t know that she was nonverbal. You know, I just kind of turned around and was smiling at her and, um, and, you know, enjoying. And the staff came over and everyone was just, like, frozen. And so I pulled out, I pulled out my flip phone again, dating myself and, you know, got a really grainy video of that, of her just belting and singing. And there’s a video of this on our YouTube channel of her. And she she was in a choir and this incredible voice, and she’s in perfect key and singing and gets to the crescendo and it gives me goosebumps just telling the story.
David Schofman: [00:45:06] It was so emotional for everybody. And her family couldn’t believe it. And as soon as the song was off, the lights just went out. Wow. And it was over and wow, she was gone. And she was back to, you know, this half catatonic state that she lives in. And, um, anyway, over the course of, I think it was only about 90 more days that she lived, you know, she would sit there and then and just certain songs that would come on that would have an autobiographical response and she would belt out. And so for, you know, we’ve got an interview with her family members, uh, also on the YouTube channel, talking about those last three months and just like you were talking about earlier on, you know, when you would visit nursing homes and see your grandparents and all the stuff. They have these incredible memories now of Elizabeth singing not all the time. They didn’t know what songs would trigger what songs. And that same Sinatra song, by the way, the next time they they were like, oh, we’ll turn it on didn’t work. And so, you know, it was they just would find certain songs that would trigger at certain moments in time. And, you know, that’s the power that music has on the brain. I mean, it’s incredible. Yeah, we’re starting to understand. We’re learning more. You mentioned the fMRI analysis. The stuff that Doctor Sax did is incredible. Um, seeing Beethoven versus Bach, I mean, it’s one of the most amazing videos. If you’ve never seen it, it’s incredible to be able to see how his brain reacted. And that’s exactly what was happening with Elizabeth. I mean, it’s, um, it’s pretty powerful stuff.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai