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Project Details


Keywords: [Sensors] [Pain Management]
Name: Pain rehabilitation: E/Motion-based automated coaching
Start Date: 1st May 10
End Date: 30th Apr 14
Total Project Fund: 1,504,100UK Pounds
Background: Almost 1 in 7 UK citizens experiences chronic pain, some due to chronic diseases such as osteoarthritis, but much of it mechanical low back pain (LBP) with no treatable cause. In around 40% of cases, people experience severe pain and are very restricted by it. There are insufficient health care resources to treat everyone face-to-face. In addition, each person's experience of pain is affected by a range of physical, psychological and social factors, which has prompted the development of multi-disciplinary self-care approaches which combine psychology and physiotherapy with input from specialist clinicians. However, while such an approach to pain management has been shown to produce good results in the short term, it is difficult for people to maintain their progress and build upon it.
Description: To date, assistive technology has not had much impact in pain management, largely because of the complexity of dealing with the emotional and motivational issues involved. The aim of this project is to design and develop an intelligent system which will monitor and assess how people's moods and movements are being affected by pain. Initially the monitoring will be undertaken in a clinical environment, but longer term could be extended to home or community settings.
Objective: Researchers aim to develop a set of methods for automatically recognising audiovisual clues related to pain, along with the patterns of behaviour typical of LBH, and the emotional states which influence the perception of pain. This information about behaviour will be integrated into a system that will provide appropriate feedback and prompts to people who are carrying out self-directed physical therapy sessions.

Organisations Involved In This Project


The main contact(s) for this project are:

Organisation Name Type Tel Town Contact
UCLIC - University College London Interaction Centre
 Academic
 020 7679 0686
 London
 Dr Nadia Berthouze

Participants:

Organisation Name Type Tel Town Contact
Dept of Health Sciences - University of Leicester
 Academic
 0116 252 5402
 Leicester
 Professor Paul Watson
Dept of Computing - Imperial College London
 Academic
London
 Dr Maja Pantic
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences - University College London
 Academic
London
Dr Amanda Williams

Funding for this project includes a contribution from:

Organisation Name Type Tel Town
EPSRC - Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
 Grant Making Body
 01793 444000/444100
 Swindon