The validity, reliability and usability of a newly developed smartphone based application to assess acute musculoskeletal knee pain

Abstract

Pain assessment is one of the most important precursors for optimal pain management. Hence, optimising pain assessment becomes a necessity in health care. Smartphone applications may be developed to assess the main parameters of pain. Therefore, this study assessed the validity, reliability and usability of a newly developed pain application called ‘Pain in the App’. This smartphone application was tested on 13 patients with acute musculoskeletal knee pain. Following one month of data collection, the data was analysed by comparing it with the Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) which is the gold standard for pain intensity. Both the Kruskal-Wallis test and the Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient found compliance between the NRS and the data entered in the application, thus confirming concurrent validity. A good level of inter-rater reliability was also found for most participants as shown by the Kruskal-Wallis test. Through a questionnaire, ‘Pain in the App’ was assessed for usability where the Independent Samples T-test showed that participants gave the application high scores for usability, design and quality of content. In conclusion, this study targeted the lack of evidence related to smartphone based applications that assess pain. It has shed light on the use of such applications particularly for the management of acute pain. Moreover, this study also identified that further research is required in this field and provided recommendations for future studies with the ultimate aim to eliminate all the barriers for pain assessment.