Digital Technology for the Management of Pain and Spasticity
Chronic pain is a common condition with significant physical, psychological, social, and economic impact. The Institute of Medicine estimates that >100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain.
Conservative estimates suggest that well over US $500 billion per year is spent in the treatment of these pain conditions. This is associated with lost productivity of these individuals and the burden that their suffering engenders for patients and their families.
In two separate surveys, the U.S. Pain Foundation asked respondents how long they have lived with pain. 36% of the adult population reported living with pain for over 20 years. For pediatrics, families reported 82% of their children have lived with pain for over half their lives.
Communication
Communication is the foundation on which any good relationship stands, and this is especially true for the healthcare provider-patient relationship.
Communicating with patients is generally easy when they’re at a hospital or clinic, but what happens when they are unable to physically attend, or would benefit from ongoing communication and assessments?
Intronix Technologies’ DHT
The answer can be found in adopting our secure, HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based digital health technology platform.
Intronix Technologies has designed digital health technology to provide tools for healthcare providers (HCP) to measure and track treatment outcomes, as well as, engage patients as an essential part of their treatment.
Benefits include:
- Providing patients and HCPs with tools to support communication, assessments, remote monitoring and telemedical visits.
- Supports a wide range application deployed from healthcare practices, to managing entire clinical studies.
- Can be equipped for both remote patient monitoring (RPM) and remote therapeutic monitoring (RTM).
Our first deployment supports healthcare providers and patients dealing with chronic pain and spasticity.
The technology is based on mobile app components that can operate independently. The highest potential is achieved when these components interact through our secure cloud.
There is a dedicated website designed to provide moral and technical support and encourage better communication.
The mobile app components can operate independently, however the highest potential is achieved when they interact with each other through our secure HIPAA compliant cloud.
Patients who use the I-Engage app, can be uniquely paired to their HCP’s I-Quantify app, thereby sharing their day to day data, to provide insight into their condition, in real time.
Our chronic pain digital health solution is based upon three pillars:
- Chronic pain community website
- Patient facing apps
- Healthcare provider facing apps
I-Engage Community Website
The I-Engage Community website has been designed to provide a wide range of support elements for patients experiencing pain. The goal is to support patients with tools to help them cope, gain confidence, share their stories with others and learn skills to help manage their chronic pain conditions, including:
- Responsive support forums that are specific for both HCP and patient apps
- Documentation/Instructions for Use (IFU); This includes IFU’s for approved remote patient monitoring devices
- Patient support forums and groups
- Chronic pain Zoom support groups hosted by US Pain Foundation trained support group leaders
- Chronic pain Zoom webinars presented by US Pain Foundation Trained Support group leaders
- eLearning programs to help build up tools and skill sets
- Video library which includes videos leading users through meditations, stretching, low impact exercises, and mindfulness sessions
- Healthcare provider directory to help patients build their support team
I-Engage App
The I-Engage app helps patients stay in control of their pain management by equipping them with tools to monitor and respond. Patients can track their pain, connect with HCPs (only uniquely paired and secure connections), and access the community (within the app).
The Engage Questionnaire is a multi-dimensional index made for the I-Engage app.
The system will inquire about pain location, triggers, and symptoms. Then, there is a battery of scales scored from 0-9, including descriptions at each level, to rate:
- Pain intensity
- Activity level
- Degree of sleepiness
- Sleep quality
- Mental health
- Quality of life
The Engage Questionnaire allows users to track their pain and wellbeing over time. The data is displayed in visually descriptive polar graphs, and bar graphs, that shows patient state, over time, at a glance.
All results are available graphically, and supportive information pertaining to the patient’s documented condition is pushed to their phone or tablet to help them monitor, track, and cope with their situation.
Electronic diaries have been shown to improve compliance and decrease the risk of recall bias. Self-management contributes to better outcomes.
Healthcare providers can train patients to fill out more intensive questionnaires to increase the value of day-to-day feedback.
These questionnaires can be selected and specifically activated on the patient’s I-Engage app. This will increase the value of the patient’s feedback and further improve communication about the patient’s condition.
I-Quantify App
I-Quantify is for healthcare providers who treat patients/clients with chronic pain and spasticity. This tool helps “engage” patients in their care.
HCPs can track patient conditions with relevant, HCP applied indexes, and monitor how their patients are doing between appointments (via secure connection with their patients’ I-Engage apps). This will support more responsive assessment of treatment efficacy and patient state, through collecting high quality, personalized patient data, with the help of patients!
Patients who use i-Engage regularly are more likely to report their conditions free of recall bias, often seen when patients try to relate how they have been between treatment encounters, months later.
Displaying data on polar graphs supports patient assessments at a glance. This saves time and allows instant identification of data that is outside of expected results. A wide variety of graphing formats are available for your convenience.
The goal is to provide ongoing surveillance of patient state, support remote therapeutic monitoring (RTM), and maintenance of the history of patients’ wellbeing.
Alerts can be set to notify if specific documented results are beyond expectations. This is especially useful to flag patients that may need to be seen earlier than their scheduled appointments.
There is power in the secure connection to patient data, and the ability to perform in-office assessments using both built-in and custom indexes. Specific indexes can be entered with I-Quantify’s index building function.
Data can be graphed and displayed using a number of different formats available within the I-Quantify app. Reports can be printed out in PDF format to allow entry into any electronic medical record (EMR).