TRAC-PainWearable Devices and AI for Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain in Youth

Up to 5% of adolescents, around 3.5 million in the US, experience high-impact chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) pain. This condition affects their quality of life, school attendance, mood, and family function, and poses a significant economic burden. Current self-report assessments for this pain are burdensome and unreliable due to recall bias. This study aims to overcome these limitations by using wearable devices and artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a digital biosignature of the individual pain experience. This biosignature will help monitor the pain experience, track its progression, assess responses to interventions, and evaluate impacts on quality of life. This approach promises to improve therapeutic development by providing robust, objective measures of treatment response. The study will enroll up to 500 youth aged 14-24 with chronic MSK pain. Participants will wear devices that continuously measure physiological (heart, respiratory), sleep, and physical (activity level, mobility, gait) activity. They will also provide repeated intra-daily self-reports of their pain experience over 12 weeks. The primary outcome of the study is the Pain, Enjoyment of Life, and General Activity (PEG) Scale, a subset of the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI). This scale evaluates pain intensity and its impact on enjoyment of life and general activity using a ranked scale, with a higher score reflecting greater disruption in daily functioning.