Manage My Pain - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

My background is in computer engineering, so I do have a development background.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

Creating an app for managing chronic pain means that we have two key stakeholders: people with chronic pain and the healthcare professionals that treat them. Sometimes the needs of these two groups are completely opposite, so it is challenging to make sure both stakeholders see value in the app and its reports.
However, the most challenging aspect is to make our app fast and easy-to-use for people with chronic pain. If you’re in the middle of a fibro-flare or a migraine, the last thing you need to deal with is a complex and unintuitive app!

_{Tahir Janmohamed}

Tahir Janmohamed, the interviewee, is the founder and CEO of ManagingLife. Based in Toronto, Canada, ManagingLife was founded in 2012. They created the first pain management app for Android, and are now a leader in digital pain management solutions.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

I think Uber has done an excellent job of creating a simple interface that allows you to accomplish the primary task (e.g. finding a ride) with a minimal number of clicks. Another app I appreciate is Ritual for its great user experience and minimalist design.
At ManagingLife, we look to the best practices of apps in other categories to create an excellent user experience for our users. The digital health category has a long way to go to catch up to the in-app user experience of other categories.

How long have you been working on this app?

We launched the beta version of Manage My Pain in 2011. It was the very first pain management app on Android at the time.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

We speak to many people with chronic pain to develop our app. We constantly hear that people are looking for a way to better understand their condition (e.g. what triggers my pain? what makes it better?) Beyond that, people are looking for a way to explain their experiences to their doctors and insurance companies. Describing pain is difficult, so we give people the language to do that so they can get the validation and treatment they need.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

There are many companies that build health apps without following an evidence-driven approach. We rely on the expertise of our clinical advisory board to make sure our app supports what is needed by clinicians to manage chronic pain. I’m most proud of a recently-completed 2-year validation study that showed people who use our app at least 30 days have better clinical outcomes. When the study is published in a few months, we will be the world’s first and only commercially-available digital solution for chronic pain with clinical validation.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

We have an exciting roadmap of features and improvements planned for Manage My Pain! I think one of the planned features most exciting for our users will be the ability to automatically track correlations between their pain and weather patterns.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

Give the app a chance and use it for a few weeks. It takes less than a minute per day. Even if you use it 2-3 times a week, the charts and graphs will highlight patterns and trends. When you create a report and share it with your doctor at next clinical visit, you’ll be surprised as the positive response you’ll get!