Abstract
Background: Mobile and web technologies are becoming increasingly used to support the treatment of chronic pain conditions. However, the subjectivity of pain perception makes its management and evaluation very difficult. Pain treatment requires a multi-dimensional approach (e.g., sensory, affective, cognitive) whence the evidence of technology effects across dimensions is lacking. This study aims to describe computerised monitoring systems and to suggest a methodology, based on statistical analysis, to evaluate their effects on pain assessment. Methods: We conducted a review of the English-language literature about computerised systems related to chronic pain complaints that included data collected via mobile devices or Internet, published since 2000 in three relevant bibliographical databases such as BioMed Central, PubMed Central and ScienceDirect. The extracted data include: objective and duration of the study, age and condition of the participants, and type of collected information (e.g., questionnaires, scales). Results: Sixty-two studies were included, encompassing 13,338 participants. A total of 50 (81%) studies related to mobile systems, and 12 (19%) related to web-based systems. Technology and pen-and-paper approaches presented equivalent outcomes related with pain intensity. Conclusions: The adoption of technology was revealed as accurate and feasible as pen-and-paper methods. The proposed assessment model based on data fusion combined with a qualitative assessment method was revealed to be suitable. Data integration raises several concerns and challenges to the design, development and application of monitoring systems applied to pain.
Highlights
Chronic pain accounts for billions of dollars in annual medical expenditures [1]; in addition to that, the resulting decreased workers’ productivity contributes to indirect costs [2,3,4], and the loss of quality of life has to be mentioned as a critical related effect
Studies were included in this review when they met the following criteria: (1) they dealt with computerised systems related to chronic pain complaints, (2) they included data about pain assessment, namely pain intensity; and (3) they were conducted using electronic means that included mobile devices (e.g., smartphone, Personnal Digital Assistant (PDA), tablet Personnal Computer) or web-based forms; (4) preliminary or definitive results were presented; and (5) they were written in English
The remaining 112 papers were full text text evaluated, which resulted in the exclusion of 63 papers that did not match the defined criteria
Summary
Chronic pain accounts for billions of dollars in annual medical expenditures [1]; in addition to that, the resulting decreased workers’ productivity contributes to indirect costs [2,3,4], and the loss of quality of life has to be mentioned as a critical related effect. Mobile and web technologies are becoming increasingly used to support the treatment of chronic pain conditions. Pain treatment requires a multi-dimensional approach (e.g., sensory, affective, cognitive) whence the evidence of technology effects across dimensions is lacking. This study aims to describe computerised monitoring systems and to suggest a methodology, based on statistical analysis, to evaluate their effects on pain assessment. Methods: We conducted a review of the English-language literature about computerised systems related to chronic pain complaints that included data collected via mobile devices or Internet, published since 2000 in three relevant bibliographical databases such as BioMed Central, PubMed Central and ScienceDirect. The extracted data include: objective and duration of the study, age and condition of the participants, and type of collected information (e.g., questionnaires, scales). Technology and pen-and-paper approaches presented equivalent outcomes related with pain intensity. Data integration raises several concerns and challenges to the design, development and application of monitoring systems applied to pain
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