Purpose We investigated patients with chronic pain seeking medical cannabis. We assessed their demographics, patterns of cannabis use, and the longterm effectiveness of cannabis on their pain and functional domains. Methods This observational study enrolled patients between 8 September 2015 and 31 July 2018 from community-based cannabis clinics in Ontario, Canada. In addition to collecting demographic information, the primary outcomes studied were pain intensity and painrelated interference scores assessed at baseline, three, six, and 12 months. Using validated questionnaires, we also assessed anxiety, depression, quality of life (QoL), general health symptoms, neuropathic pain, self-reported opioid consumption, and adverse events. Results Of the 1,000 patients consented, 757 (76%) participated at one or more of the study time points. At six and 12 months, 230 (30.4%) and 104 (13.
Objective Mobile health platforms have become an important component of pain self-management programs and hundreds of mobile applications are commercially available for patients to monitor pain. However, few of these applications have been developed in collaboration with healthcare professionals or have been critically evaluated. Manage My Pain is a user-driven mobile health platform developed by ManagingLife in collaboration with clinician researchers. Manage My Pain allows patients to keep a “pain record” and supports communication of this information with clinicians. The current report describes a user engagement study of Manage My Pain among patients at the Transitional Pain Service (TPS) at Toronto General Hospital, a multidisciplinary clinic for patients at high risk of developing postsurgical pain. Methods Patients at the TPS were encouraged to register on Manage My Pain as one component of a larger, non-randomized prospective study of treatment predictors and treatment enhancement. Uptake of the application and rates of registration, use, and retention were tracked for 90 days. Results Of the 196 patients who consented to the larger study, 132 (67%) also provided consent to the Manage My Pain component, indicating that they found this to be an acceptable treatment adjunct, and 119 (61%) completed registration. Of those who used the app, 67.9% and 43.2% continued to use Manage My Pain beyond 30 and 90 days, respectively. On average, users engaged with the app for 93.14 days (SD = 151.9 days) logged an average of 47.39 total records (SD = 136.1). Conclusions Manage My Pain was found acceptable by a majority of patients at an academic pain management program. Rates of user registration and retention were favorable compared to those reported by other applications. Further research is needed to develop strategies to retain users and maximize patient benefit.
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