Playlist for Life is delighted to be featured in the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland’s Annual Report 2025–2026 in recognition of its efforts to improve dementia care and support.
Launched at the Realistic Medicine Conference on 19th June, the annual report – Our Path Ahead – showcases the fantastic work of our partners in NHS Fife and beyond.
This recognition reinforces something we’ve long championed: music is not just a ‘nice to have’, but an integral part of compassionate, person-centred care and support.
This comes at an important moment, as health and care services increasingly embrace holistic, person-centred approaches that focus on what matters most to individuals and communities. It is encouraging to see personally meaningful music recognised as a valuable resource for connection, wellbeing, and compassionate care.
Embedding meaningful music into dementia care, from diagnosis through to end of life, has been proven to significantly improve wellbeing, ease distress, support communication, and provide vital respite for families and carers. Crucially, it also has the potential to reduce reliance on medication, with the case study featured in the report sharing how in a group of 10 patients who were supported to use playlists by Older Adults Community Mental Health Teams in NHS Fife, 80% saw a reduction in PRN medication.
At its heart, the Playlist for Life approach puts the individual, their experiences, memories and identity at the centre of their care. We hope this momentum will grow into a wider movement, driving greater adoption of person-centred, non-pharmacological approaches across the NHS and the wider care sector.
We will now leverage this recognition to accelerate the integration of Playlist for Life across Scotland’s health and care systems, so that everyone living with dementia can benefit from the power of personally meaningful music. To find out more about how we are shaping policy across the UK and to get involved in embedding personalised music into dementia care visit our policy page.
Read the full report here and see the case study demonstrating the impact of Playlist for life below.
