Category

Study

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.

Sep 12 2021
1

The Pain Studies Lab Responds to Ensure Access to COVID-19 Vaccinations

By | Study, Research, Collaborations

We responded to the call to help with COVID-related vaccination software, especially for vulnerable and at-risk people, such as those who live with chronic conditions. What also differentiated our system was its technical integration with Electronic Health Records (EHR).

As the researchers on a Canada-wide project funded by the Supercluster, MITACS, and the Digital Health Circle, we collaborated with health tech companies Cambian, IBM, LifeLabs, TickIt, Well Health, and the non-profit Providence Health Care.
Our job as researchers was twofold:

  1. to identify the real needs of people identified as “vulnerable and at-risk” &
  2. to ensure the system was as inclusive and usable as possible.

We built on our technical and design expertise in designing, building and testing health tech for people who live with long-term, chronic conditions, their caregivers and their healthcare professionals.

Our patient-centred approaches and our interests in inclusive, individualized healthcare enabled us to uncover many of the specialized contexts and needs that would have otherwise remained invisible. 

To interact with as many people as possible, we first contacted numerous non-profit organizations, interviewed their organizers and staff, and focused on in-depth interviews, usability studies and discussions with their many members.

Next, we conducted usability studies to make sure the vaccination scheduling system would be usable by those who are aging, immuno-compromised, differently abled, living in remote areas, living with chronic conditions, or who could only access the online system via mobile phones.

Clockwise: Dr. Diane Gromala, PhD students Bahiravi Warke, Xin Tong and MSc student Amal Vincent worked with people who are considered “vulnerable and at-risk” to severe illness from COVID-19 as identified by Canada’s and BC’s Ministry of Health. This included seniors, those who have cancer, are immuno-compromised, or have chronic conditions such as insulin-dependent diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney conditions, blood and rare diseases, significant developmental disabilities or require respiratory support.

Our discoveries:

    • the crucial and diverse roles of diverse caregivers (a family member, friend or neighbor);
    • the roles and centrality of extended families, especially among many people new to Canada;
    • important gender, cultural and linguistic differences; and
    • that ease-of-use is essential, not a mere luxury.

An unexpected outcome was developing a just-in-time, rapid response method to communicate the results of our research in an accelerated but scientifically trustworthy way.

Project focus and findings:

UXUI:
Needs Analyses
Usability Studies
Patient-centred Design
Inclusive Design

Jun 14 2021
0

Frontiers in Virtual Reality: Virtual Reality in Medicine

By | Study, Publications

In addition to our longitudinal fMRI studies with chronic pain patients who use our immersive VR for months, we are also conducting EEG studies.

For example, Pegah Kiaei worked with neuroscience experts to develop an EEG study that will form the basis of her MSc thesis.

This study was published in the journal Frontiers in Virtual Reality: Virtual Reality in Medicine.

Although chronic pain does not have biomarkers per se, integrating EEG data in biopsychosocial research methods that pervade pain research may enable us to make inferences about patients’ brain states before, during and after using VR.

This is important because although hundreds of studies show that VR can have analgesic effects, we aren’t sure yet how and why that happens.

If you are a chronic pain patient living in the greater Vancouver area and you would like to participate in such studies, please email:
Dr. Zahra Ofoghi – zahra_ofoghi@sfu.ca

Kiaei Ziabari, S., Ofoghi, Z., A. Rodrigues E., Gromala, D. & Moreno, S. (2021). “Investigating the role of having an avatar in virtual reality on pain alleviation and embodiment in patients with pain using electroencephalogram: a neuroimaging protocol,” in Frontiers in Virtual Reality, Special Issue: Virtual Reality in Medicine. 10 January 2022  https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2021.775764

Dec 20 2020
0

FitViz: How objective data affects physiotherapist-patient conversations for arthritis patients

By | Study, Research, Projects

Dr. Linda Li, Professor Harold Robinson/Arthritis Society Chair, Canada Research Chair, UBC & Arthritis Research Centre.

We developed a web application called FitViz. It allows physiotherapists and patients to use the physical activity data collected from Fitbit fitness trackers during consultations.

Next, we conducted a four-week study with 20 patients (inflammatory and knee osteo-arthritis arthritis) and 7 physiotherapists to evaluate the feasibility of FitViz, and understand the experiences of the physiotherapists and the patients.

We used semi-structured interviews to understand how physiotherapists used FitViz, and if and how it changed the nature of their consultation.

“Oh, I didn’t do a good job: How objective data affects physiotherapist-patient conversations for arthritis patients.”

We found that the use of objective data allowed the physiotherapist-patient conversations to be patient-driven, and allowed goals to be realistic and data-driven. However, the use of objective data also caused some patients to feel guilty, which has implications on the use of pervasive healthcare technology in clinical settings.

After iterative improvements, we initiated a larger, longitudinal study.

 

References:

Ankit Gupta, Tim Heng, Chris Shaw, Diane Gromala, Jenny Leese and Linda Li. 2020.
“Oh, I didn’t do a good job: How objective data affects physiotherapist-patient conversations for arthritis patients.”
Proceedings of the 14th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare.
Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 156–165. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3421937.3421991

Li LC., Feehan LM., Xie H., Lu N., Shaw C., Gromala D., Aviña-Zubieta JA., Koehn C., Hoens AM., English K., Tam J., Therrien S., Townsend AF., Noonan G., Backman CL. (2020). “Efficacy of a Physical Activity Counseling Program With Use of a Wearable Tracker in People With Inflammatory Arthritis: A Randomized Controlled Trial.”Arthritis Care & Research (Hoboken).
2020 Dec;72(12):1755-1765.    DOI: 10.1002/acr.24199.   PMID: 32248626 Clinical Trial.

Mar 10 2020
0

Redefining Citizen Science: the Pain Studies Lab & the Arthritis Research Centre ‘In the Wild’

By | Study, Research, Collaborations

An innovative Citizen Science workshop led to a study ‘in the wild,’  an academic-industry initiative, and a province-wide initiative about ‘the burden of pain symptoms’ — a first.

Academic researchers—from the Arthritis Research Centre of Canada (ARC) and Simon Fraser University’s (SFU’s) Pain Studies Lab and BioV Lab—partnered with award-winning industry partner Tactica Interactive to develop a web portal for all citizens of British Columbia (BC). In November 2019, SFU researchers then subjected it to testing ‘in the wild’ of a result of a collaborative effort between ARC and SFU’s Pain Studies and BioV Labs that started with an innovative ‘design thinking’ workshop last April.

Objective: In the web portal, the research teams will ask all citizens of BC about how ‘the burden of pain symptoms’ might affect their lives, from their ability to sleep and function at work and in ‘ordinary, everyday life,’ to their quality of life.

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(Photos courtesy: D.Gromala, 2019)

Bhairavi Warke and Ankit Gupta, PhD students and researchers from the Pain Studies & BioV Labs at the School of Interactive Arts & Technology (SIAT) at SFU led the mall study. Researchers: Sherry Wang, Gary Li, Pegah Kaiei, Celia Zhang, Dr. Diane Gromala & Dr. Chris Shaw.

After months of working closely with Tactica Interactive on designing the web portal, the research teams did what tech professionals are taught to do: to test it with some of the people it was designed for — citizens. Such testing is an ideal. However, in industry, ‘user testing’ can be difficult because of its cost or time it requires, or both.

University researchers usually manage to conduct such studies, but more often than not, they’re conducted in a laboratory because labs offer tightly controlled conditions. Studies done ‘in the wild’ — outside of research labs — aren’t as tightly controlled, but they can reach a larger cross section of future ‘users.’ Because the web portal is meant for all citizens of BC, the researchers insisted on testing the web portal in a mall in Surrey.

Results: The web portal’s usability, acceptability, appropriateness, legibility and readability were tested by people in the mall who were generous enough to spend time using the website and answering researchers’ questions. The results were transcribed, analyzed and communicated to the web portal’s designers and to the research teams.

Stay tuned: The web portal is now scheduled to launch in May 2020.