Improving pain treatment with a smartphone app: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial
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Title
Improving pain treatment with a smartphone app: study protocol for a randomized controlled trialAuthor (s)
Date
2018Publisher
BioMed CentralISSN
1745-6215Bibliographic citation
SUSO-RIBERA, Carlos, et al. Improving pain treatment with a smartphone app: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial. Trials, 2018, 19.1: 145Type
info:eu-repo/semantics/articleVersion
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersionSubject
Abstract
Background:
Chronic pain has become a major health problem across the world, especially in older adults.
Unfortunately, the effectiveness of medical interventions is modest. Some have argued that assessment strategies ... [+]
Background:
Chronic pain has become a major health problem across the world, especially in older adults.
Unfortunately, the effectiveness of medical interventions is modest. Some have argued that assessment strategies should
be improved if the impact of medical interventions is t
o be improved. Ecological
momentary assessment using
smartphones is now considered the gold standard in monitoring in health settings, including chronic pain. However, to
the best of our knowledge, there is no randomized controlled
trial to show that telemonitoring using a smartphone app
can indeed improve the effectiveness of medical treatments
in adults with chronic pain. The goal of this study will be to
explore the effects of using a smartphone app for telemonitoring adults with chronic pain.
Methods:
The study will be a randomized controlled trial with t
hree groups: treatment as usual (TAU), TAU+app,
and TAU+app+alarms. All groups will receive the adequate
treatment for their pain, which will be prescribed the
first day of study according to clinical guidelines. Assessment in the TAU group will be the usual at the Pain Clinic, that
is, a paper-and-pencil evaluation at the onset of treatment (beginning of study) and at follow up (end of study, 30 days
later). The other two groups (TAU+app and TAU+app+alarms) will be assessed daily using Pain Monitor, a smartphone
app developed by our multidisciplinary team. Telemon
itoring will only be made in the TAU+app+alarms group.
For this group, physicians at the Pain Clinic may decide to adjust pain treatment in response to alarms. Telemonitoring is
not the usual practice at the Pain Clinic and will not occur in the other two groups (TAU and TAU+app), so no changes
in treatment are expected in these groups after the first appo
intment. The total sample size will be 150, with 50 patients
in each group. The assessment protocol will be the same in all groups and will include pain intensity and side effects of
the medication (primary outcomes), together with several pain
-related variables like pain inte
rference, activity level, use
of rescue medication, pain catastrophizi
ng, and pain acceptance, among others.
Discussion:
We believe that the present trial has important clinical implications. We think that telemonitoring
using ecological momentary assessment is crucial to improve current interventions for pain. The armamentarium of
available treatments for pain is large, so physicians can turn to different treatments or dosages in the presence of an
undesired event. The use of the app for telemonitoring can allow for this rapid detection of unwanted events,
thus improving patient safety (i.e., with
drawal of treatment causing side effects)
and augmenting treatment effectiveness
(i.e., changing an ineffective treatme
nt or dosage). In a time when smartphones are a mainstream technology, we should
take advantage of them in the p
romotion of health care. [-]
Is part of
Trials, 2018, 19.1: 145Investigation project
This project was partially supported by grant POSDOC/2016/15 (Jaume I University) and grant UJI-B2016 – 39 (Plan de Promoción de la investigación 2016, Jaume I University).Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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- PSB_Articles [1326]
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