289: Cocreation of digital resources on pain science education for older adults with chronic pain

Topic: Clinical Science
Subtopic: Pain category (ICD-11), Chronic primary musculoskeletal pain, Physiotherapy (e.g. exercise, rehab), Digital Health Technologies , Pain in special populations (e.g. neonates, children, teens, elderly, neurodegenerative diseases)

Background and Aims: The involvement of users in the development of digital resources has been advocated to improve their overall quality, usability, and meaningfulness. Including users since the very beginning of the development phase ensures that the resources address their needs and specificities, potentially increasing their impact. This study aims to co-create digital materials (videos) on pain science education (PSE) with older adults with pain and physiotherapists. PSE involves explaining pain-related concepts using lay terms and metaphors, and, therefore, the content covered needs to be aligned with patients’ needs and conveyed in a manner that is appealing and understandable.

Methods: A series of co-creation workshops was conducted with 6 older adults and 6 physiotherapists (3 workshops with each group). First, participants were invited to comment on the written content of the PSE education (relevance, comprehensiveness, adequacy), second they were shown two videos developed based on the written content and asked to comment on accessibility, design and animation approach, duration, etc, and on the last workshop (to be conducted) they will be shown the whole series of videos, have access to the web system were the videos will be displayed and asked to assess the usability of the whole system.

Results: Both physiotherapists and older adults directly participated in refining the content for the videos by highlighting essential messages, providing examples of how certain concepts could be explained or illustrated, providing questions that needed answering, and indirectly by their questions and raising issues about the material provided. The final videos included written and animated/illustrated material and have a similar structure that includes: i) main content, ii) good news, iii) key messages, and iv) questions and answers. In addition, in a separate media content, a quiz about the contents covered in the video was also developed.

Conclusions: The cocreation enriched the process of development of the digital material (videos), making the resulting materials more relevant to the users and in a format that is more accessible and easily understood. The materials developed will be evaluated in a randomized clinical trial and may support clinical settings in delivering evidence-based PSE as well as supporting self-management for older adults with pain.

References: Acknowledgments: This work was funded by FEDER - Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional funds through the COMPETE 2030 and by Portuguese funds through FCT- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia in the framework of the project COMPETE2030-FEDER-00781500.

Presenting Author: Anabela Silva
Submitting Author: Anabela Silva

Senior Author: Anabela Silva

IASP 2026 Global Year theme of Neuropathic Pain: No

• Larissa Gozzer - School of Health Sciences, University of Aveiro
• Mayara Sousa - Department of Communication and Art, University of Aveiro
• Rita Maldonado Branco - Department of Communication and Art, University of Aveiro