PAINIMATION
Improving the
way you express
your pain
Our Mission
Painimation addresses the limitations of current unidimensional pain scales by allowing patients to express their pain using a dynamic and multidimensional medium—animations. We hope that the use of abstract pain animations in health care will help facilitate patient-clinician conversations about chronic pain, support the therapeutic alliance, and improve the quality of pain treatment.
Painimation is a revolutionary way
to describe pain!
Finding the right words to describe your pain is challenging. Current pain scales require you to rate your pain intensity using numbers or smiley faces. These assessment methods oversimplify the complexity of your pain experience. It’s impossible to know if your clinician is understanding what you are feeling.
Imagine if there were a way to fully describe the quality and intensity of your pain. You could finally be confident that your clinicians understand what your pain feels like.
Painimation uses a highly visual, abstract, and expressive mode of pain communication—pain animations (painimations). You just choose the ones that describe your pain and adjust them to fit your own experience.
Painimation results will more closely match and detail your pain experience than numbers and adjectives. Painimation will give clinicians more data to understand, diagnose, and treat your pain.
Highlights
Publications
A Novel Method for Digital Pain Assessment Using Abstract Animations: Human-Centered Design Approach
Rao N, Perdomo S, Jonassaint CR. JMIR Hum Factors 2022;9(1):e27689
doi: 10.2196/27689. PMID: 34994697.
Abstract Animations for the Communication and Assessment of Pain in Adults: Cross-Sectional Feasibility Study
Jonassaint CR, Rao N, Sciuto A, Switzer GE, De Castro L, Kato GJ, Jonassaint JC, Hammal Z, Shah N, Wasan A. J Med Internet Res. 2018 Aug 3;20(8):e10056. doi: 10.2196/10056. PMID: 30076127; PMCID: PMC6098242.
If you Can’t Assess It, How Can you Treat It? Improving Pain Management in Sickle Cell Disease
Jonassaint CR. J Emerg Nurs. 2021 Jan;47(1):10-15. doi: 10.1016/j.jen.2020.10.007. PMID: 33390216.
In the news
“Researchers Find Animations to be Effective in Accurately Measuring Pain.” UPMC, 6 Aug. 2018, https://www.upmc.com/media/news/080618-painimation. Press release.
Davis, Kathleen J. “New App Aims To Help Patients Describe Their Pain Without The 1 To 10 Scale.” NPR, 11 Sep. 2018, https://www.wesa.fm/post/new-app-aims-help-patients-describe-their-pain-without-1-10-scale#stream/0.