Description:

Seminar: 12:00 - 1:00pm CT
Q&A/Discussion: 1:00 - 2:00pm CT

Ajay D. Wasan, MD, MSc
Vice Chair for Pain Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) 
Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Co-Director, Center for Innovation in Pain Care, University of Pittsburgh 
President, American Academy of Pain Medicine

A key problem in the treatment of chronic pain is selecting treatment(s) which are most likely to work in an individual patient based on their phenotype.  Using data from a 30,000 patient pain treatment registry and machine learning techniques, we invented an algorithm by which characteristics of a presenting phenotype can be used to predict the probabilities of pain treatment success for various categories, such as medications, injections, rehabilitation, and/or mental health care. This talk will describe the science underlying this technology and the feasibility of use in clinical practice.

Dr. Wasan is the Vice Chair for Pain Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and a Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychiatry in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He is also the Co-Director for the Center for Innovation in Pain Care at the University of Pittsburgh and the President of the American Academy of Pain Medicine.  Dr. Wasan is board certified in Pain Medicine and completed fellowship training in interventional pain medicine in the Anesthesiology Department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston.  He is also board certified in Psychiatry and completed a residency in Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland.  

Dr. Wasan oversees clinical care across 10 pain clinics in the UPMC system, pain medicine faculty, and research within the Pain Medicine Division, including the mentoring of several trainees and junior faculty.  He is also Co-Chair of a system-wide committee to improve pain care across the UPMC integrated health delivery network. Dr. Wasan’s research is funded from a variety of sources, such as NIH, PCORI, and industry funds. Dr. Wasan’s diverse research interests include tracking pain treatment outcomes using electronic medical records, mechanism-based treatment studies of negative affect in pain, quantitative sensory testing, functional neuroimaging, and in preventing prescription opioid misuse in patients with chronic pain.