AI-Powered Pain Monitoring: A Game-Changer for Surgery Patients

• Scientists at South Korea’s Asan Medical Centre have created an AI-based model to correctly determine pain during and following surgery in unconscious patients.
• The AI system goes far beyond what traditional methods of pain assessment give, forecasting postoperative pain with 93% accuracy on the one hand and enabling personalized pain management on the other.

Is your pain ever rated by a doctor when you regain consciousness from surgery using artificial intelligence and no longer ask for a pain scale? That is truly not an illusion invented by PC game developers. The AMC group in South Korea has come up with a system driven by AI to measure pain with objectivity during surgery and recovery. This assessment is stated to have an immense impact on healthcare concerning the alleviation of pain, especially in patients who are unconscious or unable to communicate.

How AI is Learning to Measure Pain

Pain assessment was classically a subjective matter, depending on patient reports and the opinions of doctors and other experts. Pain, however, is not the same for everyone; it is felt differently despite similar surgeries. That said, AI comes to the rescue.

Researchers from AMC Homecare created a machine-learning model that measures a patient’s physiological variables during surgery, like heart rate, blood pressure, and blood volume changes.

The team then fed these key parameters into the AI system to be analysed for the prediction of pain.

Tested on 242 surgical patients, the model identified six variables that are key for predicting pain, and the AI program was instructed to learn exactly these things. At the end of the study, the authors reported:

• The AI system matched traditional intraoperative pain evaluation methods in terms of accuracy (83% accuracy).
• When it comes to predicting postoperative pain, the AI system dramatically outperformed current methods—hence delivering 93% accuracy to the 58% of current data.

Finally, all six items studied in this work were not the only learning items, for two other prior predictors with surprising results included an increase in motion intensity of the upper limit systolic for blood pressure and variability in the pulse width. Such results could support the development of future postoperative pain management strategies.

Why This Matters

Short of getting pain relief after surgery, there is a balance that contributes to one’s recovery. Ignored post-surgery pain may bring about a longer stay in the hospital, slower healing, or a new addition of chronic pain.

“This new model uses machine learning to allow objective evaluation of pain levels, even in unconscious or sedated patients,” said Dr. Byung-Moon Choi, PhD, a professor at the Department of Pain Medicine and Anaesthesiology at the Asan Medical Centre. “We believe this data science model will bring about a change in personalised pain management.”

Cutting-edge AI Technology in Pain Management

AI from the AMC is not the only innovative enterprise to have been changing the approach of prediction. Around the world, technology is covering the field in an increasingly smarter way.

• PainChek is an Australian AI-based company engaged in introducing its mobile application to assess pain levels along with facial recognition for elderly and paediatric patients and has already been approved for Australia and Europe while waiting for the US Food and Drug Administration approval.
• Another study showed that NEC Corporation is offering an AI-based diagnostic tool that spots the cause of chronic low back pain.
• Another efficient way towards the fight against chronic pain is through virtual reality technology—one of these being AppliedVR, a US-based startup that has made a VR device to manage chronic pain, while XRHealth has launched a game-based pain relief programme.

What’s Next?

Other AI technologies for the health sector are quickly emerging and promising to disrupt the whole domain of pain management. Hospitals can once again rely on such features as real-time pain control and personalized pain management any time soon, provided they collaborate with key engineers. Eventually, we may even be talking about predicting trouble before it happens.

Not anytime soon will AI replace those doctors. However, AI can be a great augmenting technology for doctors in making better decisions faster and more accurately. If administered correctly, this is a win situation for the patients, with less pain and quicker recoveries, which finally means quality of life being improved.

Trials ahead, with technology fast forward in the world of healthcare, prompting interventions to relieve some pain with the aid derived from AI; it will be embraced farther on.