Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage. It is a subjective sensation and patients self-report is considered the most reliable indicator of pain. However, assessment of pain is particularly difficult when the ability of the patient to communicate is limited or impossible e.g. during critical illness, under sedation and anesthesia or for infants.

The objective of this project is to benefit from the offered features of the IoT and sensor networks to provide an automatic tool which can detect and assess pain employing behavioral and physiologic indicators such as facial muscle activity, heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate. The aim of this project is to develop a system based on Internet of Things to detect and assess pain in a reliable and objective way by enabling the pain diagnoses in the case when the patient is unable to communicate and express the pain sensations.

Research Partners:

School of Nursing, University of California, Irvine, USA
UCI Medical Center, University of California, Irvine, USA
Department of Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, USA
Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine, USA
Department of Future Technologies, University of Turku, Finland
Department of Nursing Science, University of Turku, Finland
Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, University of Turku, Finland
Division of Perioperative Services, Intensive Care Medicine and Pain Management, Turku University Hospital, Finland
Center for Functional Materials (FUNMAT), Åbo Akademi University, Finland