As our world becomes increasingly digital, our healthcare services will adapt and take advantage of the new opportunties this opens up. At the same time, our patients will continue to expect human contact. With the average increase in life expectancy, as well as new treatments being available to cure or control different diseases, comorbidities are becoming more and more prevalent in most chronic diseases. As we are well aware, stress, insomnia, and depression are all comorbidities relevant to pain. Taking into account these issues, the theme for the #EFIC2022 Congress in Dublin, Ireland is “Targeting pain and its comorbidities in the Digital Age“. In addition, the scientific programme will focus on burning issues such as new research methodologies and the limitations of existing research paradigms and the future of analgesics.
An overall failure to develop new effective treatments for chronic pain conditions, coupled with an increased emphasis on personalised medicine and patient-centred healthcare has heralded an increased interest in new research methodologies in the pain field. While randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews remain the gold standard at evaluating the efficacy of clinical interventions, their limitations on an individual patient level and driving novel intervention development are increasingly recognised.
These presentations will focus on new research methodologies at #EFIC2022:
| Title | Speaker | Time |
| Wednesday 27 April 2022 | ||
| Embedding PPIE across the research cycle: from concept to closure | Emma Dorris (Ireland) |
10.30 – 10.55
|
| Open dialogue between all stakeholders to increase research relevance and impact | TBC | 10.55 – 11.20 |
| Transnational consortium research: challenges and benefits of patient involvement | TBC | 11.20 – 11.45 |
| Friday 29 April 2022 | ||
| N-OF-1 Trials | Sunita Vohra (Canada) | 08.00 – 08.20 |
| Artificial intelligence in pain research | Ziad Obermeyer (United States) | 08.20 – 08.40 |
| The opportunities and limitations of big data in health | Andrew Steptoe (United Kingdom) | 08.40 – 09.00 |
| Single case studies as part of clinical practice and research: Brain simulation and TMS | Luis Garcia-Larrea (France) | 09.30 – 09.50 |
| Single case studies as part of clinical practice and research: What could be the potential advantages of n of 1 therapeutic designs | Nadine Attal (France) | 09.50 – 10.10 |
| Single case studies as part of clinical practice and research: Psychological interventions | TBC | 10.10 – 10.30 |
| Single case studies as part of clinical practice and research: Physiotherapy interventions | Harriet Wittink (Netherlands) | 10.30 – 10.50 |
| Methodological issues in the analysis of data from (pain) registries | Gary MacFarlane (United Kingdom) | 16.10 – 16.35 |
| Deep phenotyping of pain in epidemiological studies | TBC | 16.35 – 17.00 |
| Functional genomics to identify biological mechanisms underlying pain | TBC | 17.00 – 17.25 |
