Browsing by Subject "social information processing"

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    Computers and Medicine in the 21st Century: A Digital Communications Perspective
    (2020) Park, Kristin; Ramgolam, Dina Inman
    Chronic pain is one of the most common conditions within the United States. It affects at least 116 million people and has immense economic impacts, costing $560 to $635 billion a year. Although there are some applications of telemedicine in chronic pain management, few methods exist utilizing video mediated communication (VMC) directly between health professionals and chronic pain patients. Surprisingly, no research to-date has provided a comprehensive understanding of the opportunity VMC poses for the treatment of chronic pain. To fill this gap in knowledge, the goal for this thesis was to examine the current state of research on telemedicine and VMC to fully understand it’s potential. The review conducted, yields promising insight that helps to establish how VMC may indeed improve treatment for chronic pain patients. Previous research demonstrates that cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) provided through face to face (FTF) interactions does not have significant benefits when compared to CBT provided through video mediated communication (VMC). Similarly, telemedicine and CBT, together, could provide a more efficient treatment methodology for chronic pain patients in the 21st century. This thesis discusses successful cases of VMC in other fields of medicine such as occupational dermatology, pediatric intensive care units, and neurology in terms of digital communication theories to determine what communication factors affect success. It also examines previous studies concerning current applications of telemedicine in chronic pain management and CBT inside and outside chronic pain management. The non-systematic analysis uses digital communication theories to identify why the treatment technique is transferable across digital media, VMC, to improve chronic pain management. A method blending CBT and VMC may be a solution for minimizing the use of resources that are required to treat chronic pain patients, especially by reducing travel needs for those who cannot travel to pain management specialists.