In order to allocate the healthcare resource, triage classification system plays an important role in assessing the severity of illness of the boarding patient at emergency department. The self-report pain intensity numerical-rating scale (NRS) is one of the major modifiers of the current triage system based on the Taiwan Triage and Acuity Scale (TTAS). The validity and reliability of self-report scheme for pain level assessment is a major concern. In this study, we model the observed expressive behaviors, i.e., facial expressions and vocal characteristics, directly from audio-video recordings in order to measure pain level for patients during triage. This work demonstrates a feasible model, which achieves an accuracy of 72.3% and 51.6% in a binary and ternary pain intensity classification. Moreover, the study result reveals a significant association of current model and analgesic prescription/patient disposition after adjusted for patient-report NRS and triage vital signs.
Cite as: Tsai, F.-S., Hsu, Y.-L., Chen, W.-C., Weng, Y.-M., Ng, C.-J., Lee, C.-C. (2016) Toward Development and Evaluation of Pain Level-Rating Scale for Emergency Triage based on Vocal Characteristics and Facial Expressions. Proc. Interspeech 2016, 92-96, doi: 10.21437/Interspeech.2016-408
@inproceedings{tsai16_interspeech,
author={Fu-Sheng Tsai and Ya-Ling Hsu and Wei-Chen Chen and Yi-Ming Weng and Chip-Jin Ng and Chi-Chun Lee},
title={{Toward Development and Evaluation of Pain Level-Rating Scale for Emergency Triage based on Vocal Characteristics and Facial Expressions}},
year=2016,
booktitle={Proc. Interspeech 2016},
pages={92--96},
doi={10.21437/Interspeech.2016-408}
}