103864Objective assessment of pain from human voiceClosedCollaborative R&DISCFChronic pain (pain lasting at least 3 months) affects around 1 in 3 people. While many painkillers are available, they do not work for everyone and often have undesirable side effects, including a risk of addiction. One reason it is difficult to develop better pain treatments is because there is no external way of measuring pain, other than by asking the person how much pain they feel. This is not always accurate, in part because things like mood and being distracted can affect how much pain you notice at any time. This project will develop a new method for externally measuring pain, based on signals in the rate and tone of a person’s speech. In it we will develop a computerised system that asks a patient to verbally respond to some questions and puzzles, and then analyses their speech to provide an automated score of how much pain they are in. This system will be useful during the development of new pain treatments, and ultimately may help doctors to more effectively manage pain by helping them assess more accurately whether or not a particular medicine is helping a particular patient.