Extracting Useful Epidemiological Data on Pain from Public Datasets

Numerous health-related open datasets exist, many of which span decades. Examples include the Global Burden of Disease dataset, NHS England GP prescribing data, and US health population surveys such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). While these datasets are public, they either were not designed to directly address issues related to pain, or they are heterogenous (within and between surveys) in terms of the pain-related questions that have been asked over time. Nevertheless, these are rich datasets for obtaining high-level epidemiological data on pain, its consequences, and its treatment. In this presentation the wealth of information contained in these datasets and the methods used to identify, extract and analyse such data in order to achieve novel insights into pain at national and global levels will be shown to the audience.