Posted February 26, 2009 by Lygeia Ricciardi
Dr Roger Luckmann, a primary care internist who specializes in chronic pain management, had a patient encounter that significantly influenced
his thinking. The patient, rather than trying to describe his symptoms primarily
in spoken language, brought in an elaborate and colorful calendar he had
devised to chart the types and relative levels of pain he experienced throughout
each day.
Roger was impressed. Thanks to the calendar, he was able to grasp that patient’s experience unusually quickly and with a high level of subtlety. This kind of communication is important to help doctors and patients to discover patterns and devise effective treatment and management strategies.
Thinking about how similar visual representations could be
used by other patients led Roger to apply for a
Project HealthDesign grant. Today, he and his partner Amin Vidal have designed a PDA-based input tool
that links to a version of a visual calendar for patients with chronic pain.
Patients enter data about their pain and activities into the device at regular
intervals through a customized interface that cuts data entry to less than 60
seconds.
The online calendar, which patients and doctors can access, aggregates the patient’s observations and translates them into useful patterns. Roger has found that this set of tools, like the paper version that helped to inspire it, has dramatically improved his ability to communicate meaningfully with his own patients—a task which, as you might imagine, can be challenging given a subject as abstract as pain.
Roger and Amin speculate that their tool may hold particular
value in cases in which providers and patients don’t speak the same primary
language. Currently in such cases an interpreter is present for medical
encounters, which ads significant time and cost and increases the risk that a
few details will be lost (ever played the game “telephone”?). They are going to
experiment with offering the tool in Spanish or Vietnamese. While it may not
eliminate the need for an interpreter, it may make the process of communication
easier and more accurate.
As for other plans, the team will soon do a broad field test to fine tune their tools, and is looking at opportunities to work with companies who may be interested in developing such products commercially. If you are interested, I’d be happy to put you in touch with Roger and Amin….
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