Pain Diary - CatchMyPain app review

An app for people with chronic pain who want to track their pain and join an online community of others with chronic pain.

CatchMyPain - Pain Diary	By Sanovation
	Features Pain log Trigger recording Graphs and reports Reports for sharing Online community Requires upgrade for more features
Clinical review
User reviews	(0 reviews) Be the first to rate this app!
Available from	App website iTunes Google Play
Cost	Free (paid upgrade)

What does the app do?

This app allows you to keep track of your pain by recording its location, intensity, description, duration and effect. Once you have at least 3 pain entries, the app generates a pain chart (after a couple of hours), where you can see the course of your pain. You can record events or circumstances that increase or ease your pain. The app has an online community for support, advice and to share experiences. The paid upgrade version of the app promises tracking of fatigue and stress, and a weather feature, which based on the time of your entry and current location, the weather conditions are integrated in your pain entry. The app collects anonymized data from entries for research. For a more detailed description of the app, see Google Play or iTunes and for a detailed review, see Reviews.

Pain Diary - Catch My Pain app screenshots

PROS	CONS
✔ Using a body figure or avatar, users can easily map their pain location and intensity. ✔ Logging is fairly rapid although drawing the pain locations can take some time and previous entries are not saved to speed this process up. ✔ Reports can be generated and are given as an expirable web link. ✔ Users can record their pain as it happens or hold an entry to complete at a later stage.	✘ Does not include information on pain and self-management options. ✘ Comments and advice posted in the online community section do not appear to be moderated. ✘ Pain questions are quite limited (e.g. no questions about triggers or exacerbating and relieving factors). ✘ Cannot easily log the effectiveness of any treatment without writing in the notes section, making it difficult to easily see what works and what doesn’t. ✘ Report summaries are not as useful as the other reviewed apps and are not easily downloadable as pdf (have to print web page as a pdf). ✘ Some diagnostic tests and medication options discussed in the forum may not be relevant to a NZ audience.

PROS

CONS

✔ Using a body figure or avatar, users can easily map their pain location and intensity.

✔ Logging is fairly rapid although drawing the pain locations can take some time and previous entries are not saved to speed this process up.

✔ Reports can be generated and are given as an expirable web link.

✔ Users can record their pain as it happens or hold an entry to complete at a later stage.

✘ Does not include information on pain and self-management options.

✘ Comments and advice posted in the online community section do not appear to be moderated.

✘ Pain questions are quite limited (e.g. no questions about triggers or exacerbating and relieving factors).

✘ Cannot easily log the effectiveness of any treatment without writing in the notes section, making it difficult to easily see what works and what doesn’t.

✘ Report summaries are not as useful as the other reviewed apps and are not easily downloadable as pdf (have to print web page as a pdf).

✘ Some diagnostic tests and medication options discussed in the forum may not be relevant to a NZ audience.

Privacy and security

The app has a privacy policy which is displayed when first loading the app, which states that aggregate data (data that cannot identify individuals) will be shared with others such as health professionals, researchers and companies manufacturing medical products. Reports can be generated and are given as an expirable web link which means that the user can limit how many days the report will be viewable. Read more about things you can do to improve your safety and security when using apps.