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Patients with chronic pain often experience coexisting, long-term and debilitating mental health comorbidities such as depression and anxiety. Artificial intelligence–supported cognitive behavioral therapy (AI-CBT) interventions could offer cost-effective, accessible, and potentially effective resources to address this problem. However, there is not enough research conducted about the efficacy of AI-CBT interventions for chronic pain.
This prospective cohort study aims to examine the efficacy and use of an AI-CBT intervention for chronic pain (Wysa for Chronic Pain app, Wysa Inc) using a conversational agent (with no human intervention). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such study for chronic pain using a fully-automated, free-text–based conversational agent.
Participants with self-reported chronic pain (n=500) will be recruited online on a rolling basis from April 2022 through posts on US-based internet communities within this prospective cohort. Informed consent is received from participants within the app, and the Wysa for Chronic Pain intervention is delivered remotely for 8 weeks. Outcome measures including a numeric pain rating scale and Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System–Pain Interference, Generalized Anxiety Disorder–7, and Patient Health Questionnaire–9 questionnaires administered to test the effectiveness of the intervention on reducing levels of pain interference, depression, and anxiety. The therapeutic alliance created with the conversational agent will be assessed through the Working Alliance Inventory–Short Revised instrument. Retention and use statistics will be observed for adherence and engagement.
The study will open for recruitment in April 2022, and data collection is expected to be completed by August 2022. The results for the primary outcomes are expected to be published by late 2022.
Mental health conversational agents driven by artificial intelligence could be effective in helping patients with chronic pain learn to self-manage their pain and common comorbidities like depression and anxiety. The Wysa for Chronic Pain app is one such digital intervention that can potentially serve as a solution to the problems of affordability and scalability associated with interventions that include a human therapist. This prospective study examines the efficacy of the app as a treatment solution for chronic pain. It aims to inform future practices and digital mental health interventions for individuals with chronic pain.
PRR1-10.2196/36910
Chronic pain is a long-term debilitating health concern that affects physical, psychological, cognitive, and social functioning [
Mental health difficulties such as depression and anxiety are among the most common comorbidities present with chronic pain [
Similarly, research suggests that anxiety and fear arising from chronic pain are likely to interfere with recovery from the pain [
Chronic pain management through psychotherapeutic techniques is important since a commonly observed impact of chronic pain is the reduction in coherent behavior due to the consistent threat of pain [
Psychological treatments for chronic pain are usually cognitive or behavioral strategies aimed at reducing mental suffering and promoting active engagement with life [
Since depression in patients with chronic pain often goes unrecognized, it therefore remains untreated [
Research suggests that factors like support and encouragement from caregivers, access to a variety of self-management techniques, and treatment of depression can serve as facilitators in improving self-pain management [
Digital mental health interventions can potentially address the issues of accessibility, rising health care costs, low availability of therapeutic care, and other barriers [
Currently, one way in which these digital mental health interventions address the barriers of accessibility is by augmenting digitally delivered tools with human coaches [
The intervention proposed in this study employs one such AI-CBT intervention, the Wysa for Chronic Pain app (Wysa Inc), that uses an AI-enabled conversational agent with a free-text conversational interface. It listens and responds to the user’s distress by recommending techniques and self-care tools based on CBT, behavioral reinforcement, and mindfulness, among other evidence-based therapies. Wysa supports the user in dealing with multiple challenges such as anxiety, sleep, low energy, motivation, loss, and pain. The app has been shown to be effective through mean improvements in symptoms of major depression (Patient Health Questionnaire–9 item [PHQ-9]) among users who were highly engaged with the app when compared to a low engagement group [
This is an exploratory study following a quantitative research design that aims to study the efficacy of a digital mental health intervention program for chronic pain when delivered solely by a conversational agent. The duration of the study is 8 weeks, and the efficacy will be calculated through the use of standardized statistical measures.
In this study, 500 individuals living with chronic pain will be recruited and administered an 8-week program on the Wysa for Chronic Pain app (a specific version of the publicly available Wysa app). This is an anonymous study where the participants enroll themselves by installing the app on their mobile phones and agree to participate in the study. We will restrict this version of the app to the Apple App Store and Google Playstore in the United States. Once enrolled in the program, participants will complete an assessment at the start of the study (comprising 4 measures), complete an 8-week program with the AI-led conversational agent during which another assessment (5 measures) will be taken halfway through the program, and complete the final set of assessments (5 measures) at the end of 8 weeks (
Timeline of the study. NPRS: numerical pain rating scale; PROMIS-PI: Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Pain Inference; GAD-7: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, 7-item; PHQ-9: Patient Health Questionnaire, 9-item; WAI-SR: Working Alliance Inventory–Short Revised; CBT: cognitive behavioral therapy.
Eligibility criteria include being aged 18 years or older, experiencing chronic pain, and not receiving any form of professional mental health support. Individuals who do not self-report presenting with chronic pain will be excluded as a part of the recruitment criteria. The data of participants who score below 4 points on a 1-item numeric pain rating scale (NPRS) at the first assessment will be excluded from the analysis [
Participants are currently being recruited on a rolling basis from US-based internet communities centered around the experiences of living with chronic pain. We will share information about the research study by posting on social media platforms. The purpose of these posts is to introduce potential participants to the Wysa for Chronic Pain app, inform them of the aims of this research study, and subsequently invite them to download the app on their devices. All participants will need to have an Android or iOS phone and have access to the internet while using the app. Interested participants will be screened on the basis of self-reported scores on the NPRS and their responses to a set of questions that will collect baseline demographics (age range), type of chronic pain, and the time since onset.
Participants will remain anonymous for the duration of the study and are being recruited from a US-only population. After participants download the Wysa for Chronic Pain app and agree to the app’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, they will opt in to the study using a consent screen following Wysa’s security and compliance guidelines. The consent screen states the purpose of the trial, potential risks and benefits associated with participation in the trial study, and mechanism for opting out of the study at any time. They will also be informed of the ways in which the usage data generated from their participation in the study could potentially be used.
A separate version of the publicly available Wysa app, Wysa for Chronic Pain, is being used for this study. This is a conversational agent–only version (ie, it does not include one-on-one human coach support, which is an option with the publicly available app). The AI-enabled free-text conversational agent offers participants a space to talk about their pain, depression, anxiety, and other issues arising from disturbances due to chronic pain. The conversational agent acts as a companion in their journey (
The conversational agent builds an 8-week road map for the user and does daily morning and evening check-ins to encourage adherence to the program (
Steps included in the user’s journey includes participating in activities that comprise a mix of positive psychology, acceptance and commitment therapy, and CBT techniques that will be conducted in an organized, weekly fashion to encourage the development of skills aimed at coping with pain and the reduction of depression and anxiety symptoms.
In contrast to traditional worksheets or psychoeducation materials common in digital mental health [
The app provides the user an open space for conversation by giving the user the ability to converse with the conversational agent through free text (
Onboarding conversation with the conversational agent that sets the expectation for the program and administers the first assessment.
First mood check-in with the conversational agent.
Example screenshots showing the conversational style of the app and the flexibility given to the user through free-text inputs.
Study participants will complete the self-administered measures, NPRS and the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System–Pain Inference (PROMIS-PI) short form 6b, at the baseline, midpoint, and after the completion of the study. Both measures will be administered through the Wysa app and will be completed on the participants’ own devices.
The NPRS is a unidimensional measure of pain intensity in adults with chronic pain [
The 6-item PROMIS-PI was developed by the National Institutes of Health to measure the negative effects of pain on physical, mental, cognitive, emotional, social, and recreational functioning. This study uses a 6-item pain interference scale that aims to measure the extent to which pain causes a hindrance in various aspects of an individual’s life, including those related to activities done for fun as well as day-to-day activities. A 5-point ordinal rating scale is used with options being 1 (not at all), 2 (a little bit), 3 (somewhat), 4 (quite a bit), and 5 (very much). The raw scores are converted to T-scores based on a scoring manual. Although the PROMIS-PI forms are relatively new, their responsiveness has been found to be comparable to legacy pain measures [
In order to observe ancillary impacts of the intervention, study participants will complete 2 additional self-administered measures (PHQ-9 and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, 7-item [GAD-7]) at the baseline, midpoint, and after the completion of the study. The Working Alliance Inventory–Short Revised (WAI-SR) will be administered at the midpoint and after completion of the study only. All measures will be administered through the Wysa app itself and will be completed on the participants’ own devices.
GAD-7 is a widely adopted, standardized, and validated 7-item self-report questionnaire developed to assess symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. This 7-item anxiety scale has been found to have good reliability as well as construct, procedural, and factorial validity [
PHQ-9 is a widely used, standardized, validated 9-item survey assessment tool for depression that has been shown to be valid and reliable as a longitudinal clinical tool [
The WAI-SR is a well-established measure of therapeutic alliance, consisting of a total score and 3 subscales: bond, goal, and task [
We will use the Wilcoxon signed-rank test to measure the efficacy of the intervention by comparing baseline and postintervention assessment scores on the NPRS, GAD-7, and PHQ-9 scales. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test is a nonparametric statistical hypothesis test used to compare the differences between 2 populations using a set of matched samples. We will also use the Wilcoxon signed-rank test for measuring the median of therapeutic alliance using the WAI-SR scale. We chose this test because we believe that our data will not be normally distributed, in which case a nonparametric test is more suitable. Finally, we will do a paired
Recruitment for this study will begin in April 2022 and continue on a rolling basis until 500 participants have been recruited. The baseline, midpoint, and postintervention assessment data for participants who have completed their 8-week intervention will be evaluated to determine if the intervention had any significant effect on their pain interference, depression, and anxiety scales. Although participants are encouraged to check in twice a day, there is no mandate for continuation in the program. Final outcomes will be based on end of program assessments, and engagement is evaluated across the cohort to evaluate efficacy in a real-world use setting. Another round of recruitment may be needed if the retention rate is low. App use, engagement, and retention will also be assessed to determine the acceptability of an AI-only conversational agent to support chronic pain management. From this pilot, we hope to learn more about what frequency and how many check-ins can be considered as sufficient use of the app so as to have desirable outcomes for the user. Data collection for all participants is expected to be completed by August 2022 and results to be published by late 2022.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to assess the efficacy of a fully automated, free-text–based conversational agent as an assistant for chronic pain patients. Prior to this, Hauser-Ulrich et al [
Wysa for Chronic Pain overcomes these shortcomings. Moreover, apart from using a conversational flow tailored for chronic pain, it also provides participants with a wide array of self-care tools they can use to deal with other issues like insomnia, depression, anxiety, and negative thoughts anytime they want [
Treatment of chronic pain often requires a multidisciplinary and multidimensional approach, targeting both the physical and psychological aspects of the disease. Many techniques like behavioral activation, mindfulness exercises, CBT, interpersonal psychotherapy, and psychoeducational tools have been tried for different kinds of pain, with each showing promise for different aspects of pain management [
To address these challenges, this study proposes to investigate the efficacy of a conversational agent–led intervention for chronic pain without the need for human coaches or special devices. The Wysa for Chronic Pain app involves no human coach in the loop, but the free-text–based AI-enabled conversational agent is capable of understanding and responding to a user’s messages like a human therapist would. The advantages of using a digital mental health conversational agent like Wysa are manifold. First, therapy and self-care tools grounded in CBT, mindfulness, and other evidence-based therapies become immediately accessible to the patient via their mobile phone. Second, the strain on human resources is reduced. Third, anonymity allows patients to share their thoughts and feelings more freely, thereby increasing alliance. Fourth, especially in the context of chronic pain, when even routine activities seem overwhelming, a mobile assistant puts the resources literally in the user’s hands and takes away the effort, stress, and additional challenges required to go meet a therapist. Finally, the conversational agent also acts like a companion who is always there to talk to [
Another facet of the treatment for chronic pain includes the therapeutic alliance between the individual and the support system. Emerging evidence for chronic musculoskeletal pain indicates that a strong therapeutic alliance may improve pain outcomes [
A challenge associated with most digital mental health interventions is ensuring adherence and engagement [
To encourage participation, the study has intentionally been structured to be anonymous. The app does not require the creation of an account nor does it ask for personal identification data (name, age, location, etc). Any sensitive information, if provided accidentally by a participant in a conversation, is identified and redacted by an algorithm to prevent retention in the system. This kind of anonymity may promote trust in the app among the users and encourage them to feel more open and engage with the conversational agent. It is only available in English, which is a limitation of the service.
Although recruitment for this study is being done from online communities of people living with chronic pain, one challenge that remains is the inability to verify chronic pain in the cohort recruited. All participants will be self-referred, thus making it difficult to assess whether they satisfy the inclusion criteria. In addition, their presence in online communities oriented to the support of pain may indicate sampling bias toward individuals with a greater willingness to learn about pain self-management [
Chronic pain is one of the leading causes of long-term disability in the world. It is a complex problem with roots in social, economic, physical, and psychological aspects and affects more than 1.5 billion people worldwide. Treatment is difficult, and it often requires continuous pain management. Depression and anxiety are the most common comorbidities occurring with chronic pain, and psychological interventions have been shown to result in better outcomes for treatment of chronic pain. Digital mental health solutions make these interventions accessible and affordable. This study describes a novel AI-CBT intervention, the Wysa for Chronic Pain app, which is completely led by a free-text–based, AI-enabled conversational agent. The intervention takes the user through a variety of techniques and self-care tools grounded in CBT and mindfulness, which enable the user to learn how to self-manage their pain on a regular basis. The results from this study will be important in understanding the efficacy of such an intervention that can potentially serve as a scalable and cost-effective resource for chronic pain patients around the globe.
artificial intelligence
artificial intelligence–supported cognitive behavioral therapy
cognitive behavioral therapy
Generalized Anxiety Disorder, 7-item
numerical pain rating scale
Patient Health Questionnaire, 9-item
Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System–Pain Inference short form 6b
Smartphone-Based Health Care Chatbot to Promote Self-Management of Chronic Pain
Working Alliance Inventory–Short Revised
CS and TM report being employed by and owning equity in Wysa Inc. MG reports being employed by Wysa Inc.