WAVi Co. — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: NIDA

Description

Pain assessment is a pressing clinical problem in need of better measurement toolsProposedsolutions include electroencephalography and event related potentialsEEG ERPautonomic measuressuch as heart rate and heart rate variabilityand analysis of facial expressionsAll of thesepromising modalities could potentially combine into one streamlined test by establishing theprotocols that give the highest information content for the lowest clinical time burdenInaddition these markers should be validated in generalized clinical settings and should bear baresome relationship to pathophysiological mechanisms of painThis proposal utilizes the experience of fMRI based pain studies from the University of ColoradoAffective Neuroscience Laboratory and WAVia commercialized brain assessment platformThe WAViplatform presently incorporates all of these above mentioned modalities into their clinic friendlysystem for other purposesincluding a combination of ERP and reaction time that is highlysensitive to concussionThe aims of this project are to similarly develop a scalable WAVi basedtest for acute musculoskeletal pain that is readily accessible to cliniciansto use the fMRI tovalidateinterpretand improve the WAVi markersand to create a dynamic data asset to helplongitudinally predict transition to chronic pain and test interventionsAccomplishing these aims will assist clinicians on the front lines of pain assessment andtreatmentnot to replace clinical judgmentsbut to serve as a component in a multi modalassessmentThe platform needs to be scalable into a wide variety of settingswith simpleobjective readouts for cliniciansto aid the diagnosis and management of acute painincluding opioid decisionsto help assess the extent of potential tissue injuryto identify risk of transition to chronic painactionable through more aggressiveinterventionscontrol of inflammationprevent reinjuryetcto identify successful interventionsto help patients whose pain is not believedCRPSfibromyalgiachronic fatigueThis study will focus on data collected from clinical settings currently using the WAVi systemonpatients when in pain and at the presumably pain free final visitwith a subset of patients alsoreceiving an fMRI This project will help create a clinically accessible test for pain assessmentprovide insightinto pathophysiological mechanisms of painand structure an in vivo dataset to explore bothacute chronic pain transitions and interventional outcomes