Experiencing pain, both acute and chronic, is extremely frequent globally. Not surprisingly, pain has become one of the most common reasons for work disability, physician appointments, and medication use across countries. Additionally, pain onset and chronification are very often associated with significant emotional burden both in the patient and their family, which results in increased required care. In this scenario, recent decades have seen an explosion of studies exploring the effectiveness of both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments for pain, and, consequently, clinicians now have a relatively large armamentarium of interventions with adequate levels of evidence for pain care.

While important and successful efforts have been made to improve current pain therapies, important challenges associated with pain assessment and treatment exist that require the implementation of novel approaches to pain care. For example, pain treatments are not available for a large number of patients, and optimal pain management (e.g., multidisciplinary) for those who receive care is relatively rare. Additionally, patient monitoring between appointments is still infrequent and patient travelling is almost always required both for treatment delivery and follow-up consultations, which poses significant safety threats and economic and time burdens on the patients. A change in the approach to pain assessment and treatment is required if pain care is to become more efficient, effective, economical, and safer.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly being used in pain care to deal with some of the challenges presented above. The present Special Issue aims to cover different ICT solutions to contemporary barriers in pain care, both acute and chronic.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Technology-enhanced patient safety in the management of pain
• Technology-enhanced pain treatment effectiveness or efficiency
• ICT implementation in pain management research
• Usability and acceptability of ICT for patients and physicians in pain management and treatment
• Technology-enhanced pain treatment dissemination
• Technology-enhanced assessment or diagnosis of underlying conditions causing pain
• Treatment of pain in special populations with ICT
• ICTs include but are not limited to:
• Telephone and video-conference
• Treatments delivered through the Internet
• Virtual and augmented reality
• Smartphone applications
• Wearable and embedded sensors
• Other technologies (artificial intelligence, robotics)