PAINT
Paint is an app that allows patients to document and describe their symptoms in more than words. It was designed to help women advocate for themselves while navigating a healthcare system that often dismisses their symptoms, leaving them misdiagnosed and in avoidable pain.
With the app, patients can visualize their pain in real time by scribbling on or marking relevant areas on a diagram of a human body. It also allows patients to specify the duration and intensity of their symptoms, and express how they feel in that particular moment through text, voice, emojis, and images.
One of the reasons for dismissing women’s symptoms—aside from a long history of sexism in the healthcare system—is that patients often don’t have the tools to describe their symptoms. In her book, Every Patient Tells a Story, author and physician Lisa Sanders reports that because of the time constraints of doctor’s appointments, the average patient gets interrupted 11 seconds into their history-taking procedure if they are unable to describe their symptoms quickly enough.
In this way, patients create their own “PainScapes”—which show them and their doctor where their pain is manifesting. The final feature is a “draw argument” button—which outputs a summary of the patient’s predominant and minute pain areas—making it easier for doctors to get familiarized with the patient’s experience.