MyCarePath - Chronic Pain
An e-Learning Platform to Help Pediatric Patients to Learn to Manage and Take Charge of Chronic Pain
Partner
BC Children’s Hospital Pain Service
Pain BC
Type of work
technology
Overview
Pediatric Chronic Pain Management is Complex
Chronic pain impacts over 10% of hospitalized children, although this condition is often overlooked. Chronic pain can be a diagnosed condition such as musculoskeletal pain, or the result of a condition like rheumatoid arthritis. Managing chronic pain is challenging as it is highly variable, ranging in duration from ongoing to episodic, and in severity. As chronic pain impacts a child’s physical and psychological well being, and can impact their ability to participate in normal age-appropriate activities such as school, effective management is key. The MyCarePath platform was redesigned by BC Children’s Hospital Pain Service, Pain BC, and the Digital Lab to better support patients and their families in managing chronic pain.
Research & Design
Enhancing a Chronic Pain Management e-Learning Website
The Digital Lab collaborated with the BC Children’s Hospital Pain Service and Pain BC to enhance MyCarePath. The collaborative team aimed to update the design, functionality and content of the platform to best serve the needs of its users, while also simplifying the content management process for MyCarePath.
The Digital Lab redeveloped the MyCarePath website and integrated evidence-based content provided by the MyCarePath team. The site contains self-guided educational modules pertaining to why chronic pain happens, the importance of activity and relaxation, and small positive changes that can be made that have a large impact on a patient’s well-being to centralize critical chronic pain education. In order to improve engagement and cater to visual learners, custom animated content was developed for the platform. To individualize the user experience, users can create profiles that allows the platform to make smart recommendations based on their needs and action plans to personalize their pain management. For ease-of-use, a filterable resource library has been created to streamline access to curated evidence based resources.
The MyCarePath platform will be simple to maintain because of a customized content management system that allows for updates to be made to all platform content as research on pain management continues to evolve.
Impact
Accessible Online Chronic Pain Management
Since launching in 2016, MyCarePath has established itself as an effective chronic pain management tool with users from across British Columbia, Canada and the world. MyCarePath has had 33,000+ pageviews since launching with the majority of users being located in Vancouver (13.08%) in addition to users in the United States of America, United Kingdom, France and Australia. The updates to MyCarePath ensure that the platform is engaging, user friendly and can remain current with ongoing research. Through personalizing the platform with smart recommendations, users unique pain management needs can be met.
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