I’ll admit, I come to this topic with a degree of scepticism. Artificial intelligence and chronic pain?

And yet… I find myself curious. In fact, I was genuinely fascinated reading a recent review exploring how AI is being used in pain assessment and management.[1] What struck me was not so much the technology itself, but the problem it’s trying to solve. Pain is inconsistent, shaped by mood, context, history, and clinicians are often working with partial information. Some of the developments are quite striking: AI systems using facial recognition to detect pain, which feels particularly important for those who cannot easily verbalise their experience, for example, people living with dementia.[1] Tools that can detect patterns, or even predict how pain might evolve, begin to make a certain kind of sense.

Where it becomes more tangible is in the world of apps and self-management. I had a brief look at Curable(https://www.curablehealth.com), which draws on pain neuroscience and psychological approaches, though I note there is a cost attached, which may or may not be a barrier depending on the person. What interests me here is the broader shift: tools that sit alongside therapy, offering support between sessions, helping people track patterns and make sense of their experience in real time. That feels potentially helpful.

If you’re using anything like this in your own practice or personally, I’d genuinely be interested to hear how it’s working for you.

As with mindfulness apps, I find myself holding both curiosity and caution. The research so far is promising but still early, lots of pilot studies, small samples, more questions than answers.[1] There are also wider conversations happening in this space. Events like the IASP World Congress on Pain (https://www.iasp-pain.org/resources/events/world-congress-on-pain/) are increasingly including discussions about digital health and AI, which suggests this is only going to grow. For now, I’m left wondering not whether AI has a place in pain care, but how we use it thoughtfully, in a way that supports, rather than oversimplifies, the complexity of people’s lived experience.

Footnote
[1] Zhang M. et al. (2023). Using artificial intelligence to improve pain assessment and pain management: a scoping review. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.