All Posts By

Tim Kagiri

Apr 10 2025
3

Pain Studies Lab Collaborates with Faculty at Harvard’s Medical School & Boston Children’s Hospital

By | Study, Research, Collaborations, Lab Updates, Other News

Dr. Diane Gromala and Dr. Chris Shaw are collaborating with Dr. Deirdre Logan at Harvard’s medical school. The group is adding an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) component to a new program that treats Young Adults who live with chronic pain at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Researchers in the Pain Studies Lab — neuroscientist Dr. Zahra Ofoghi, Biomedical Engineers Armin Froozanfar and Sara Khalilipicha, and Computer Scientist Efe Erhan — have updated the lab’s Virtual Meditative Walk (VMW) for this purpose. Initially built and tested in 2011, the Virtual Meditative Walk has been consistently updated according to their on-going co-design work with patient-partners and their research findings.

The VMW integrates VR with biosensors, data visualization, and AI, all of which work together to help chronic pain patients learn to better manage their persistent pain via MBSR (Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction). It has been tested in multiple research studies in health research, computer science, and UXUI design. As it evolved, the VMW was continually tested in clinical and home contexts, and in short and longitudinal research studies.
Dr. Logan and Dr. Gromala met at a Consensus Meeting at Sick Kids in Toronto. There, with ~30 pediatric pain experts, they co-developed guidelines that researchers are encouraged to follow as VR is quickly being adopted for clinical use. At the recent vMED conference at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, for example, presenters demonstrated that the number of research papers about VR has grown in the past 10 years to over 30,000 papers worldwide.

Given that the opioid crisis has not abated, such “non-pharmacological” methods of managing chronic pain, such as VR, are promising. Similarly, the use of VR to treat PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) by the Veterans Administration (VA) has been so successful that the VA recently announced its widespread adoption in the U.S. (Bailey et al.), from an initial 5 sites to 147 sites.

Because MBSR is a skill that takes regular practice to learn, the researchers are exploring the feasibility of using VR in the program at Boston Children’s Hospital. They are also exploring any specialized needs that Young Adults may face if they use VR or MBSR on a regular basis. The pilot study phase is already underway.

  1. To access the 20+ peer-reviewed, evidence-based research papers published about the VMW, please refer to painstudieslab.com/publications
  2. Bailey AL, Kirsh S, Rawlins C, Persky S, Clancy C. Early Scaling of Immersive Technology within the Veterans Health Administration. NEJM Catal Innov Care Deliv. 2024 Apr;5(4):10.1056/CAT.23.0356. doi: 10.1056/CAT.23.0356. Epub 2024 Mar 20. PMID: 39474356; PMCID: PMC11521419.
Sep 03 2023
1

Pain Studies Lab Research at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Canadian Pain Society(CPS)

By | Study, Research, Conferences, Events

On May 10-12, 2023, members of the Pain Studies Lab presented two posters at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Canadian Pain Society in Banff, Canada. The Canadian Pain Society connects healthcare professionals, scientists, researchers, policymakers, and people with lived experience through evidence-based education. Each poster articulates the results of scientific and clinical studies conducted by members of the Pain Studies Lab in collaboration with other organizations in British Columbia.

Poster 1: Diversity of Social Presence in VR

Yuemei Wu presented a poster about the Diverse Forms of Social Presence in VR for Chronic Pain in a number of our immersive virtual environments. “Social Presence” is often assumed to involve two users sharing the same Virtual Environment (VE), and each user inhabits an avatar communicating in real-time. However, we argue that other forms of social presence can be experienced in multiple ways for multiple purposes. For example, a number of our VEs have humanoid, animal or robotic characters who help users navigate or interact.

Wu Y, Chong K, Gromala D, Shaw C, Kagiri T, Williamson O,  Li R, Kim D, Hortsing S, Wilson M. Diverse Forms of Social Presence in VR for Chronic Pain.  In the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Canadian Pain Society, Banff, Canada, 10-12 May 2023.

Graduate student Yuemei Wu introduces the VEs to someone with lived experience.

Poster 2: Neuroscience: essential for the Design of VR for Chronic Pain

In this poster, neuroscientist Dr. Zahra Ofoghi demonstrates an intriguing method she developed to help partially automate structured reviews. Her approach also enables researchers to gain an immediate sense of interdisciplinary differences of the resulting research papers that met the search criteria. That a neuroscientist learns to integrate visualization apps for purposes of pain research may appear to be novel, we take pride in such interdisciplinary achievements, especially for knowledge translation that may be useful for others, building bridges across disciplines.  

Ofoghi Z, Gromala D, Kagiri T. Neuroscientific Implication for the Design and Development of Virtual Reality for Patients with Chronic Pain. In the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Canadian Pain Society, Banff, Canada, 10-12 May 2023

Bridging the Gap: Dr. Zahra Ofoghi’s Innovative Neuroscience Approach Unveiled in VR for Chronic Pain.

Title: Toward a collective understanding of chronic pain journeys through Perspectives of diverse healthcare professionals

Kit-Ying Angela Chong conducted a pre-research early investigative activity developed from a co-design and co-speculation course. The goal was to explore co-design methodologies and understand the barriers chronic pain patients may face from a healthcare professional or researcher’s perspective. The early investigative activity resulted in several learning outcomes. For instance, the journey map as an intervention tool in a conference setting was not as effective as expected, however, it was a successful conversation starter. Angela planned to iterate the activity and further develop it into a research study that contributes to the chronic pain community.

Unveiling Insights: Kit-Ying Angela Chong Explores Chronic Pain Journeys from Diverse Healthcare Perspectives.