Design and Development of PainBit: a Portable Device for Supporting Patients with Chronic Pain to Log their Pain
Arsh Saleem, Beck Langstone, Alicia Ouskine, Fateme Rajabiyazdi
TL;DR
PainBit addresses the need for effortless, real-time pain logging in chronic pain patients by delivering a portable, clinician-informed device. The authors design and iteratively evaluate PainBit through two-week field use and qualitative interviews, analyzed with applied thematic analysis. Key findings highlight patient preference for a physical, wrist-worn device and identify design priorities such as reduced size/weight and extended battery life for future iterations. The work demonstrates the potential of dedicated wearables to enhance daily pain monitoring and support improved patient-provider collaboration in chronic pain care.
Abstract
Recently, we have seen growing interest among patients with chronic conditions to track their health-related data. There are many wearable devices available to track different health data. However, tracking pain is mostly done by using pen and paper or mobile apps. In collaboration with a healthcare professional we designed a portable pain tracker, PainBit. To gain an understanding of patients' perspectives on our tracker, we conducted two case studies with patients living with chronic pain. We asked patients to use PainBit for two weeks and later conducted semi-structured interviews with them. Patients found PainBit useful for tracking their pain and they preferred using a physical device, PainBit, to track their pain over using a mobile phone. Patients suggested reducing the size and weight of PainBit in the next iterations. We report on the lessons learnt through our design process and the evaluation studies.