| acute pain management

Fighting Pain and Injection Fears...

...With a Soft Robot

Ask any kid: a soft cuddly stuffed toy can help with sleep and anxiety. Can a soft robot, worn and clenched by a person in pain or fearing an injection, also provide comfort? What if it clenches back? Researchers developed a soft, wearable robot with airbags and tested/compared scenarios:

  • The patient clutching the robot, but the robot not moving—no feedback
  • The robot randomly inflated to clench, whether or not the patient clenched it—random feedback
  • The robot clenched back when the patient clenched it—a response feedback

The measures below were obtained from 72 healthy patients. When participants wore the robot:

  • Their Pain Assessment Scale was reduced
  • Salivary oxytocin and cortisol levels in a posthoc comparison were lower
  • A significant decrease was seen in participants’ fear of injections after participation in the experiment
  • Psychological state: posthoc comparison showed a significantly higher happiness state if they wore the robot

Despite various limitations, the “study demonstrated the potential of social soft robotics and human-robot interaction in alleviating human pain/fear. …incorporating the latest augmented reality technology into the robot (e.g., by wearing a head-mounted display) will enable the introduction of further social human-robot interaction features, such as dialogue between the robot and the human. These potential research avenues will aid the development of solutions to pain/fear alleviation during medical procedures, such as vaccinations.”

 

Read the journal article.

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