Data-driven improvement of Chronic Pain Care

Chronic pain affects various aspects of daily life, causing physical or social decline, psychological problems, and reduces quality of life. In the Netherlands, over two million people suffer from chronic pain, with an estimated cost of around €20 Billion per year, including 700,000 people with severe pain and 33,000 patients with complex problems. Additionally, there are challenges in treating chronic pain, such as over- and under-treatment of patients, fragmented care, and moderate to poor treatment outcomes. There are (national) approaches addressing these challenges; National Care Standard for chronic pain, Value-based healthcare and the Integrated Care agreement (IZA). Nevertheless, concrete tools are still lacking.

The Value4Pain consortium (V4P) aims to address major issues in chronic pain by accelerating value-based pain care. V4P consists of public and private frontrunners: Maastricht University Medical Center+ Pain Medicine, University Maastricht, and Medtronic Integrated Health Solutions. The goals are achieved through three work packages; 1) provide insights into the complex care process by a comprehensive data platform, 2) develop tools for goal-setting and shared decision-making, and 3) create predictive models to determine treatment outcomes and assess the benefit of treatment or care plan.

V4P objectives are to improve the treatment of chronic pain patients, particularly those from low socio-economic backgrounds and those with high levels of pain, anxiety, depression and catastrophizing. V4P aims to provide personalized pain management and contributes to social and economic wellbeing of chronic pain patients. Much of the annual costs of chronic pain is due to patients seeking the right treatment without success. If the V4P initiative leads to a 1% more efficient chronic pain care system, it could save 200 million euros annually and improve the quality of life for 100,000 people. The consortium hypothesizes that a data-driven approach is essential for maintaining accessible, high-quality healthcare at affordable costs.

For more information: https://www.pijn.com/wetenschappelijk-onderzoek