I Hate Dialysis Message Board

Off-Topic => Other Severe Medical Conditions => Topic started by: iolaire on October 17, 2018, 09:43:55 AM

Title: Technical talk on tracking weather for Chronic Pain Management forecasting
Post by: iolaire on October 17, 2018, 09:43:55 AM
The 35 minute video is technical, related to the Ruby programing language, but the story is good how a man built a logging tool to allow his woman to document her pain level (in the UK well she waited for a knee replacement) via a text message, at the same time his tool logged the atmospheric pressure so that later he could forecast when bad pain days would be.
https://schwad.github.io/ruby/rails/community/2018/10/16/speaking-on-ruby-and-chronic-pain-management-at-sheffield-ruby.html

I couldn't tell if he built the forecast predictions before her surgery or not but the idea was to remove the uncertainty of if a particular day would be a bad pain day for her or not.  At the end he talks about how he is working with others to improve the project and also add temperature to the mix.

This is good use of modern machine learning to help build custom pain forecasts for a specific person based on their own recorded pain levels.  He also gets into how objective pain levels are, someone’s 1 might be a 4 to another, and thus having customized data and forecasts makes sense.

Then pain forecast allows someone to know if they should be out and about having fun, or if that day should be an at home day.

I think the video is worth a watch if you feel any of your aches and pains are weather related.
Title: Re: Technical talk on tracking weather for Chronic Pain Management forecasting
Post by: PrimeTimer on October 17, 2018, 08:16:44 PM
This is kind of interesting. I have Fibromyalgia and my pain level quite often is affected by the weather. Even if it is not going to rain where I am but some sort of frontal system is moving through the region, I feel it. I can remember living very far away from where a tornado hit but all that day my body hurt. Then I found out about the tornado wiping out a small city. I swear I had felt that storm front come thru even tho it had not stormed in my own immediate area. Whenever my pain level rises, I start checking the weather report.   
Title: Re: Technical talk on tracking weather for Chronic Pain Management forecasting
Post by: iolaire on October 18, 2018, 03:21:30 PM
Yes I could assume all sorts of triggers could be determined, UV, Pollen count, temperature, pressure etc...

For example in your case it might not the rain but the change in pressure or a specific pressure level from the frontal systems, but with good reporting of your pain level you could figure out if moisture is the trigger or something else....