Pain is difficult to recognise in infants. Even dedicated parents find it challenging to tell the difference between a hungry infant to a baby in pain. Plainly the problem is that infants range of facial expressions is very limited and deciphering cries it's not always easy to determine when a baby is actually experiencing pain. Now take this challenge and multiply it with having multiple cots and the daily pressures of working in a neonatal unit as a healthcare worker. And you'll see a survival adaptation in medical staff where it's even more challenging to distinguish the communication cues from infants.
Currently, neonatal units may use objective pain scales to research pain. These scales look into a variety of factors such as facial expression, body posture, blood pressure and sensitivity to handling. But research has shown there is still bias from healthcare workers when assessing an infant take limits it's use.
Ai could be the answer through the development of face-recognition system that can assist in unveiling infant communication and allow us to know when infants are genuinely experiencing pain. This innovation could prove a game changer in the neonatal units in alerting medical staff and providing a measure for serious distress warranting further investigations. This is an area of research that is not invasive and can give far better interpretation of an infants clinical presentation and aid parents to bond with their infants.
Various studies are underway and we hope parents will see this technology soon being deployed in settings to dynamically alert caretakers and generate data for research for improved use.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.00331.pdf
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/351786
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