Four chronic pain sites in Ontario, Canada, will deploy the “Manage My Pain” app to help patients with chronic pain better manage and monitor their symptoms so they can communicate more effectively with their physicians.
The app was developed by ManagingLife to allow chronic pain patients with conditions like fibromyalgia, back pain, or migraines record how they are feeling from home, so their physicians can remotely monitor the progress of their patients’ pain, function, and medication use outside the clinic and in-between visits.
The use of “Manage My Pain” will be supported by a 24-month project funded through the Health Technologies Fund, a Government of Ontario program to support the development of made-in-Ontario health technologies.
“There is an urgent need for innovation so we can better measure and monitor chronic pain patients to identify their treatment needs and facilitate improved care while they are at home,” Atul Prabhu, Lead of the Comprehensive Integrated Pain Program at the University Health Network, said in a press release.
“Manage My Pain is a great example of how technology can help close an important clinical gap,” Prabhu added.
The results of the project will be detailed in a health economics report, published by the Centre for Excellence in Economic Analysis Research (CLEAR), a research group that specializes in economic evaluation of healthcare interventions.
ManagingLife establishes partnerships with hospitals, clinical trials, and insurers to help healthcare professionals measure, monitor, and manage their patients’ condition.
The 24-month Ontario project is led by Dr. Prabhu, along with his colleagues Dr. Hance Clarke and Dr. Anuj Bhatia, Medical Directors of Pain Services at the Toronto General Hospital and Toronto Western Hospital, respectively. In addition to those two urban hospitals, “Manage My Pain” will be deployed at the Centenary Pain Clinic, based at the Rouge Valley Centenary Hospital, and at the Iroquois Falls Family Health Team, based at Anson General Hospital. respectively.
“We are fortunate to be working with pain management leaders for this project,” said Tahir Janmohamed, chief executive officer of ManagingLife. “Our objective is to show how Manage My Pain enables better care closer to home for the millions of chronic pain sufferers in Ontario and across Canada.”
Nearly 10 years ago, non-cancer chronic pain was estimated to affect about 14 percent of the Canadian population.
Toronto General Hospital’s Transitional Pain Service (TPS) has been using the “Manage My Pain” app since 2015 to help prevent chronic post-surgical pain (CPSP) in at-risk patients.