Pain - a subjective experience - can only be truly understood by the individual living with pain. However, you and others in pain have a unique story that can add value and knowledge to the scientific understanding of pain. In our research project, PainStory, we seek to detect and analyze common patterns or differences in pain expression.
Pain disorders often lead to a degradation in quality of life or well-being. We are using patients’ narratives to help understand patients’ pain experiences, and the activities and situations that make pain better or worse. We will look for common patterns across individuals, in both pain expression and narratives. Future work will lead to the creation of tools which pain clinicians will use in the effective diagnosis and treatment of pain.
