A team of Brown medical students recently won the 2025 Annual Assembly Early Career/Professionals in Training Scientific Research Podium Award for their research exploring how personalized music therapy can improve the experiences of patients undergoing infusion treatments.
The award, given by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, recognizes innovative research by early-career medical students, residents and fellows in the field of hospice and palliative care.
Claire Lin ’23 MD’27, Diana Wang MD’27 and Ishaani Khatri ’21 MD’25 conducted the research at the Miriam Hospital, where they provided patients with access to a personalized Spotify playlist during treatment. The project investigated whether listening to curated music could help alleviate treatment symptoms like pain, nausea, anxiety and depression.
Patients completed surveys designed to evaluate their physical and emotional states before and after the intervention. The results, which the team said showed promising improvements in patient well-being, were later presented at the AAHPM conference.
“I was just doing this project because I really enjoyed it,” Wang said. “I wasn’t even thinking about any accolades or anything.”
Wang added that the team was particularly encouraged by the enthusiasm expressed by other researchers and clinicians during the conference for their approach.
“When we first started this project, at least for me, I just had a lot of joy talking to patients at the invasion clinic. I didn’t really think we were gonna do that much with it,” she said. “The weight of our research … didn’t really hit us until we got to the conference and we saw how excited people were for the research.”
Wang also noted that there were “a couple attendees” who approached them after their presentation to ask how “they could bring (the group’s research) to their own hospitals.”
The authors’ musical backgrounds also helped motivate their work.
Khatri is a pianist and former music therapy volunteer. During her time volunteering, she was particularly struck by how patients in hospital settings responded to different types of music. She noticed patients found the greatest comfort in familiar music, whether that was a Broadway tune, pop ballad or melody from Aladdin.
Lin’s belief in the therapeutic power of music is rooted in her own childhood, during which she played the violin for her grandmother who was battling pancreatic cancer.
“Her favorite song was ‘Amazing Grace,’ which I had just learned,” Lin said. “Even if it wasn’t super well-played or anything, that brought a lot of joy to her.”
For Wang, the connection between music and medicine became clear when she played in a regional symphony as a teenager. Her stand partner, a retired physicist with Parkinson’s disease, had a noticeable tremor — except when she played her instrument.
This experience later led her to study neurobiology and inspired her interest in how patients can benefit from the connection between wellness and healing.
Experts in music and medicine continue to recognize music as a powerful therapeutic tool. Kerry Devlin, a senior music therapist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine who was not affiliated with the study, said that music can lower heart rate, improve oxygen levels and help with anxiety.
“There are a fair number of studies … exploring use of music to reduce instances of delirium, or severity of delirium for hospitalized patients,” she said in an interview with The Herald. “Just the simple act of playing familiar music every day can actually really improve cognitive outcomes for patients who are in the hospital.”
Despite increasing evidence of music’s benefits, Devlin said that the lack of integration into clinical settings is due to the lack of infrastructure or awareness in many health care institutions.
“We’re only just beginning to scrape the surface of what we know about how and why music is helpful, and how to optimize use of music for different kinds of clinical needs,” she added.
With their research gaining momentum, Lin, Wang and Khatri are working to make music therapy a standard feature at the Miriam Hospital. Their next steps involve collaborating with hospital volunteer coordinators to ensure that patients have continuous access to music, and they are hoping to expand the program to other hospitals and health care settings.
“Research … doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Khatri said. “We research for the sake of providing better care or treatments to our patients. And I think something that’s so exciting about this project in particular is the fact that we could really directly see the impact it had on the patients.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated quotes from Diana Wang, Claire Lin, Kerry Devlin and Ishaani Khatri. The article has been updated to accurately reflect Wang’s comments on her motivation behind the project and the excitement expressed by conference attendees. It has also been updated to accurately reflect Lin’s statements on playing music in her childhood. Changes have also been implemented to accurately reflect Devlin’s sentiments on existing research and music optimization. The article has also been updated to accurately reflect Khatri’s comments on the purpose of research. The Herald regrets these errors.
