Dr. Yacine Hadijat

Associate Professor, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences

“I am honored and excited to be part of the inaugural Dubai Research, Development, and Innovation (RDI) Grant Initiative, which stands at the forefront of advancing global solutions in health and technology. Our project presents a tremendous opportunity to transform how patients and clinicians assess and manage pain, a critical issue in healthcare. By combining advanced technologies with health sciences excellence, we aim to provide millions of patients suffering from pain with accurate, objective, and personalized measurement solutions. In collaboration with Professor Jinane Mounsef from RIT Dubai UAE and Professor Lars Arendt-Nielsen from Aalborg University Danmark, we are eager to develop innovative, Tech-driven approaches that leverage real-time data, wearables and digital biomarkers. This initiative not only fosters groundbreaking research but also reinforces Dubai’s commitment to innovation, excellence, and a future defined by knowledge, technology, resilience and better patient care.”

PainDetect is a pioneering research and development initiative aiming to redefine the way healthcare providers assess and manage pain. Traditional methods rely on patients’ subjective self-reports, which can be unreliable or impossible to obtain in cases where individuals cannot communicate effectively—such as infants, sedated patients, or those with specific neurological conditions. Our multidisciplinary team is developing a cutting-edge platform that integrates wearable sensor technologies, AI, and personalized data analytics to provide an objective measure of pain in real time. By using physiological biomarkers—including heart rate variability, electrodermal activity, and other autonomic indicators—PainDetect will establish a novel “Pain Index” that transcends traditional scales and turns subjective interpretation into objective measurement. Through advanced deep learning models and extensive clinical validation, the platform aims to accurately gauge pain levels with high degrees of accuracy against standard pain-rating systems. In addition to enabling immediate clinical decision-making, the system’s adaptability will cater for a wide range of medical settings, from post-surgical recovery to cancer pain management. The impact of PainDetect’s work goes beyond simple technological enhancement. By offering a more reliable measure of pain, healthcare providers can optimize treatments and therapeutic benefit/risk balance, particularly for treatments with known risk profiles and complex conditions. This paradigm shift could contribute significantly to improving pain evaluation, measurement and management for millions of suffering people, including underserved populations such as non-communicant patients. Led by Dubai Health and the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, supported by renowned collaborators at Rochester Institute of Technology in Dubai and Aalborg University in Denmark, PainDetect aligns with the UAE’s vision for innovative healthcare solutions and sets the stage for global transformation in pain management. The project aims to deliver cutting-edge technologies, major scientific advancement, and enhanced clinical practices for the benefit of people suffering from pain globally.