Use a mobile app to self-assess back pain, just as effective as current paper methods

Patients can assess their own back pain using an app on their phone or tablet as effectively as current paper methods, revealed a new study from the University of Warwick.

The study, published in the journal open access Journal of Medical Research on the Internet, demonstrates that digital versions of established back pain assessment measures are equally reliable and responsive, allowing patients to use them for routine measurements and clinical trials.
The researchers view this study as a necessary first step in the increased use of digital media in a clinical setting, in light of recent calls for increased use of this technology by healthcare providers.

For health problems that can not be easily measured, such as pain and depression, clinicians often use self-assessment to monitor changes. In most cases this will take the form of a paper assessment. These go through very thorough validation exercises to ensure that they measure what they intend to do in a robust and accurate manner.

Researchers created mobile application versions of the most commonly used measures in back pain trials: the Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ), Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) of Pain Intensity and the numerical rating scale (NRS). These have been developed with the support of the University of Warwick's Higher Education Innovation Fund for the purpose of being used in clinical trials and for clinical measures of the University of Warwick. routine.

Back pain is the leading cause of disability in the world, affecting up to 84% of people at some point in their lives. It is estimated that it costs the British economy billions of pounds each year.

The lead author, Dr. Robert Froud of the University of Warwick's Clinical Trials Unit, said, "We have taken existing outcome measures and shown that they can be migrated to digital media and used in this format, as effectively as their paper versions, to develop a technology that allows users to securely perform these types of assessments on their own phones and tablets safely, securely and accurately.

"If you can accurately monitor the evolution of patient health in clinical practice, you can do a lot of things analytically with the data that patients will benefit from – for example, we may be able to detect that Special treatments work better We hear a lot about machine learning, but it may be a medical learning system.

"The implications are quite large because we can aim for a surge, which opens up a potential for the development of new instruments and dynamic instruments that adapt to the answers given by the user." Using digital technology in health care environments is extraordinary you can not do anything without first having assessments that work well and well. "

Reliability and responsiveness were used to determine if their applications were measuring what they should be. Reliability refers to the result of the measurement that does not change when nothing has changed, whereas responsiveness refers to a change in the result when a measurable factor has changed.

The researchers divided the study participants into groups based on whether or not they had a change in their pain. People who had received treatment for their disease and who had improved tested the responsiveness of applications. People suffering from chronic pain and less likely to improve have tested the reliability of applications.

Digital testing has many advantages over paper-based versions, including low cost, reduced carbon footprint, increased information security, and improved participant experience.

Earlier this month, a new report from the Royal College of Physicians, titled Ambulatory Care: The Future – Adding Value Through Sustainabilitycalled for greater use of technologies already available in the health sector.