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Here's one estimate for the cost of pain: $61.2 billion per year. That's from a recent article by Walter "Buzz" Stewart, PhD, MPH, in the Journal of the American Medical Association. But Stewart points out that it's still only part of the picture. , putting a number on the cost of pain is tricky. Pain is a subjective experience -- no one can ever know what someone else's pain feels like.
How common is pain?
In 2003, Research America released the results of a survey of 1,000 people in the U.S. The survey showed:
- 57% of all adults have had chronic or recurrent pain in the last year.
- 75% of people currently in pain had to make adjustments to their lifestyle because of their pain, including 33% who had to make major adjustments.
Moreover, many people in pain are undertreated, according to surveys. In 2004, the American Chronic Pain Association released the results of its Americans Living with Pain survey. Of the 800 adults with chronic pain interviewed, almost half say that their pain isn't being controlled by their treatment.
Medical research has proven that consistent use of a Personal Health Application (PHA) can improve the quality of care for those suffering from acute or chronic pain, terminal illness, and other medical conditions.
PainPHA is a web based Software as a Service (SaaS) application that enables patients to record condition, doctors, pain locations, pain types, pain intensity, medications, naturopathic remedies, sleep patterns, treatments, therapies, exercise, activities, additional symptoms, and quality of life concerns.
This service facilitates better communication between patients and their healthcare providers through account file sharing or secure Provider Portals. Patient driven data will help providers identify both effective and ineffective treatments and medications. Healthcare providers may then make treatment and medication modifications to improve efficacy and provide patient-members with a more consistent and improved quality of life.