What You Should Know:
– Children’s National Hospital has received a $8M award from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to further develop the AlgometRx Nociometer, a device designed to objectively measure pain.
– Led by Dr. Julia Finkel, a pediatric anesthesiologist at Children’s National, aims to transform pain management and address the unmet needs of patients, particularly women, who often experience disparities in pain assessment and treatment.
Addressing the Challenges of Pain Assessment
Traditional pain assessment methods often rely on subjective measures, such as visual rating scales with faces depicting different levels of pain. These methods can be imprecise and fail to capture the complex nature of pain, leading to inadequate treatment and frustration for both patients and clinicians.
The AlgometRx Nociometer: A New Era of Pain Measurement
The Nociometer offers a more objective and precise approach to pain assessment. This portable device utilizes non-invasive technology and algorithms to analyze pupil dilation and the body’s response to stimulation along specific nerves. In under a minute, the device can generate a patient profile that quantifies how the nervous system processes pain signals.
Addressing Gender Disparities in Pain
This project is part of the ARPA-H Sprint for Women’s Health, an initiative focused on addressing unmet challenges in women’s health. Dr. Finkel’s research aims to improve the understanding of gender differences in pain and develop more effective treatments for women.
“As physicians, we often feel helpless to understand how our patients are experiencing pain and whether treatments are working,” Dr. Finkel said. “We use the Visual Analog Scale, which fails to classify the pain’s etiology or help guide a specific intervention, often leaving us to treat by trial and error. The Nociometer will change that.”
“Research studies have long shown that pain in women and girls is underestimated and undertreated,” Dr. Finkel said. “Creating a novel technology to quantify pain has tremendous applications in pinpointing and effectively treating pain, potentially altering treatment in nearly any medical setting.”
Collaboration and Support
Children’s National will collaborate with researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Medstar Research Institute on this project. The $8M award will be distributed over two years through ARPA-H’s launchpad track, which provides funding and support for later-stage health solutions.
