Flourish Rerelease: Healthcare's Shocking Gap in Pain Data with Martha Lawrence

Why It Matters

Objective pain measurement unlocks cost savings, mitigates bias, and creates a clear business case for health‑system investment, reshaping how providers and insurers evaluate and adopt innovative technologies.

Key Takeaways

• Pain lacks objective data, driving cost and equity gaps.
• Ascendo Wave uses brainwave analytics to quantify patient pain.
• Bias in pain reporting affects women, minorities, and seniors.
• Health systems now buy tech via insurers, not direct sales.
• UCLA’s innovation hub accelerates medtech commercialization through collaboration.

Summary

The episode spotlights Martha Lawrence, CEO of Ascendo Wave, discussing the glaring absence of reliable pain data in U.S. healthcare and its repercussions for cost, equity, and clinical decision‑making. Lawrence explains how Ascendo Wave tackles this gap by correlating brain‑wave signals with patients’ self‑reported pain, creating nine objective pain databases that benchmark individual experiences. Key insights include the pervasive bias in pain assessment—women, ethnic minorities, and seniors are systematically under‑treated—while pain remains the top driver of healthcare utilization yet is invisible in claims and electronic health records. Lawrence cites her observation of 300 emergency‑department triage interviews, revealing wildly inconsistent pain scores, underscoring the need for a standardized, data‑driven metric. Notable examples feature the quote that pain is “the number one reason patients access health care,” and the shift in physician roles: 80% now work for health‑system owners, acting as influencers rather than decision‑makers. Lawrence also describes leveraging insurers and government partners as strategic levers to bypass cumbersome hospital procurement cycles. The conversation highlights broader implications: objective pain data can improve health‑equity outcomes, reduce litigation risk, and provide clear ROI for health systems within a year. UCLA’s Technology Development Group emerges as a collaborative incubator, linking academic research, funding, and real‑world validation to accelerate solutions like Ascendo Wave into the market.

Original Description

Pain is the number one reason patients access healthcare, yet objective pain data is virtually absent from claims systems and EHRs. Martha Lawrence, CEO and co-founder of AccendoWave, explores how her company is building benchmark databases that correlate brainwave activity with pain perception, addressing both the clinical and financial gaps that leave health systems exposed. They also dig into the changing vendor-to-health-system sales landscape, de-risking innovation adoption, and how emerging CMS models like TEAM are creating new urgency around pain data.

Originally aired on Flourish, This Week Health's leadership-focused podcast. Flourish has joined The 229 Project Podcast — bringing these conversations to a wider audience of healthcare IT leaders.

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Key Points:

03:56 Objective Pain Data

08:44 Selling Innovation Today

13:43 UCLA Innovation Engine

22:25 CMS Models And Pain

30:13 De Risk And Wrap Up

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