The need for PainTrain and Pro PainTrain
While some medical record systems and pain diaries already existed, Soula didn’t find any of them allowed patients to summarise the level of detail needed to fully explain how the pain was affecting their lives. These products also didn’t record all the details often required by health care practitioners.
A system was needed to couple together all the aspects of a patient’s pain journey and put them in the driver’s seat to manage their care better.
Soula’s pain story — the accident and the pain
Soula and her husband Theo own ooi.com.au – a graphic design company. In 2007 Soula was working on a design brief for a client when the fit-ball she was sitting on exploded. She dropped to a concrete floor, which since, has caused her extreme, ongoing chronic pain.
Soula has “tried a thousand things” and consulted “loads of experts” to try and solve her chronic pain. Each time Soula saw a new expert, she found herself having to:
-
Retell her story — describing her capacities before the accident, restating the injury’s impact on her daily activities, her lifestyle, and her wellbeing.
-
Retell her treatment journey — describing the details of the medical tests and treatments in her quest to be pain-free.
… and so came the inspiration for PainTrain
Soula finds the retelling of her medical history traumatic and tedious.
One of the problems of having to explain her experience is that Soula — as many of us would — found it difficult to remember, in sufficient detail, the names of the experts she had seen, when she saw them, the names of the tests they carried out, the treatments they experimented with, which ones worked, which ones didn’t, the variations on the experimentations, the names of all the medications, the doses, the frequency, etc.
Soula realised that the key to living with, and overcoming chronic pain was to accept it and take responsibility (where possible) for its management. For her to do this, she needed a system that would work as a type of ‘health CV’.
With the help of some very savvy developers, Soula realised the idea for PainTrain which she has used since its inception in 2015.
Pro PainTrain
Now, Soula is releasing the Pro version of PainTrain – a customisable version of the resource that can incorporate your organisational details, include your personal practice’s specifications as well as suit your hosting preferences – yes, it can be your private patient resource!
Like PainTrain, Pro PainTrain can help ease the pain journey, save everyone associated with the management of pain time and money, and together with your professional help, empower patients to manage their own care.
PainTrain was founded and developed by Soula Mantalvanos after she developed chronic pain following an accident.
Soula’s Mission
Soula began with the mission to enable chronic pain patients to summarise information about their condition and to easily share it with whoever they chose including health care practitioners, carers, family and friends.
Soula’s vision
To improve the chronic pain journey with an online summarising tool that provides options for efficient communication between patients and their care team.
