Automated Digitisation and Analysis of Paper Pain Drawings for Improved Diagnostic Accuracy of Polymyalgia Rheumatica in Primary Care

Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) is an inflammatory rheumatic disease primarily seen in older patients, diagnosed in primary care, and treated with oral corticosteroids. It can be challenging to distinguish PMR from conditions with similar symptoms, with an incorrect diagnosis of PMR leading to delayed diagnosis for the true condition, and unnecessary steroid treatment. A pain manikin is a measurement tool for collecting self-report pain data, where people mark the location of their pain on a diagram of the human body. Advanced analysis of PMR pain manikin data may be able to improve the accuracy of PMR diagnosis in primary care. I will develop clinically relevant summary measures for PMR data, and build a machine learning model to distinguish PMR from other painful conditions.