I-Corps: A digital health diagnostic technology that provides a multilingual, multimodal, and multidimensional pain management tool

The broader impacts/commercial potential of this I-Corps project - CIPDAR (Culturally Informed Pain Diagnosis and Relief) - are potentially three-fold. The first benefit is a reduction in health disparities by improving both verbal and non-verbal communication between Limited English Proficiency (LEP) chronic pain patients and healthcare providers, resulting in greater diagnostic accuracy and improved treatment outcomes.

The second is savings in time and money as improved diagnostic accuracy can eliminate unnecessary testing and lead to more effective treatment plans over shorter timespans. The third benefit is cost-effective adaptability to other diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, and cancer. CIPDAR will also add significant knowledge to pain science, as well as health communication, including management and diagnostic best practices.

By including cultural norms and fluency in other languages, CIPDAR can not only re-engage disenfranchised LEP patients, but improve their trust in the healthcare system by leveraging culturally and linguistically informed content and resources. The families of chronic pain LEP patients can also use CIPDAR to not only help advocate for their loved ones, but to better understand their needs when a condition has no cure.

This I-Corps project, CIPDAR (Culturally Informed Pain Diagnosis and Relief), offers more than a simple translation service for Limited English Proficiency (LEP) chronic pain patients. Using a patient-centered approach, it incorporates culturally specific terms, phrases, and relevant questions to improve patient-provider communication. All features are designed and written by bilingual individuals, ensuring that patients receive accurate information that is also culturally and linguistically congruent.

The technology integrates biopsychosocial interventions and techniques to better equip LEP patients with pain management tools, such as online modules that teach time management, work-family balance, and medication tracking. CIPDAR not only measures pain via patient self-reporting strategies, but also by analyzing non-verbal behaviors (e.g., gestures, movements, and facial expressions), providing multiple data streams for more informed pain assessments.

By offering biopsychosocial interventions along with improved patient-provider communication, CIPDAR will address the detrimental effects of misdiagnosis, ineffective treatment, and medication misuse. It will empower LEP patients with chronic pain to advocate for themselves without having to rely on family members acting as translators or on simple, culturally-uninformed commercial translations.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.