Multimodal assessment of pain in intensive care

Project leader: Adjunct Professor Jukka Kortelainen

Intensive care patients suffer frequently from pain. Due to the limited possibilities in the assessment of this experience, their pain medication is often suboptimal leading to inferior outcomes and long-term problems. In this project, cutting-edge methods in physiological signal analysis and facial expression recognition will be applied to unique data recorded from patients treated in the intensive care unit (ICU). This approach will be used for the creation of a next-generation framework for multimodal assessment of pain. The goal is to create a technology that would objectively and reliably be capable of measuring the pain experience of intensive care patients. This multidisciplinary project has the potential for high impact not only in the scientific field but also in improving clinical patient care in the ICU. In addition, substantial commercial potential in terms of technology transfer for the use of industry is recognized.