My background is in computer engineering, so I do have a development background.
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, 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.
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.
We launched the beta version of Manage My Pain in 2011. It was the very first pain management app on Android at the time.
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.
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.
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.
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!
About App:
Track, analyze, and share your pain.
Manage My Pain helps you and others better understand what you are going through. It has helped thousands of people with conditions like fibromyalgia, migraines, arthritis, or back pain better understand their symptoms and provide evidence of their pain for their doctors, insurance companies, or government agencies. Manage My Pain was created in partnership with industry-leading pain researchers - your doctor will actually read the reports from our app! Our daily reflections help people focus on their meaningful activities as opposed to the limitations created by their pain.
Manage My Pain will help you:
• Record how you're feeling: Easily describe your pain in less than 30 seconds
• Reflect on your day: Take your mind off pain and record activities that are meaningful to you
• Highlight patterns and trends: Charts and graphs describe your results and get more powerful over time
• Track how well your meds are working: Add any medication to your profile and mark if it helps manage your pain
• Describe your pain to your doctor: Summarize your pain through unique reports that your doctor will actually read
Developed for patients suffering from and care-givers or medical professionals treating:
• arthritis & rheumatism
• cancer
• chronic pain
• headaches & migraines
• fibromyalgia
Use this pain management app to replace your hand-written:
• pain diary
• pain journal
• pain log
• pain tracker
The Pro version adds the ability to view or report on more than the last 30 days. Reports are free to generate, however, those that contain advanced sections may require an additional credit to be purchased. An optional monthly subscription can be purchased so that an unlimited number of reports with advanced sections may be generated without the need for credits.
Categories: Medical
Date: April 27, 2020
Developer: Tahir Janmohamed
About developer: Tahir Janmohamed, the interviewee, is the founder and CEO of ManagingLife. B ... Read more
Website: https://managinglife.com/
This app is the absolute world leader in the number of connected Bluetooth monitors and it is ...