PainVisible measures pain with a thermal camera and AI — One Show 2026 Best of Pharma

In medical diagnoses, 90% of patients cite pain as a primary or associated complaint, yet measurement still depends on the patient's words, gestures or a number picked on a scale. Babies, stroke patients, people with autism or Down syndrome, and patients facing language or cultural barriers cannot always speak their pain — so it goes unheard.

Give pain a visual language: a thermal camera reads body-surface heat patterns, and AI turns them into an objective pain map doctors can act on.

Aritium, VML Health and WideLabs built a portable thermal camera that attaches to a doctor's smartphone: it detects body-surface heat patterns indicative of pain, and an AI-powered app compares the data with thousands of patient studies and environmental factors to produce a thermal map, an objective assessment and evidence-based treatment recommendations.

PainVisible is in use in hospitals across Spain and internationally, with plans to expand across Europe, Latin America and the US in 2025–2026. At One Show 2026 it won Best of Pharma, a Gold in Products and a Silver in Craft / Use of Technology.

Pain is the most common complaint in medicine — 90% of patients cite it as a primary or associated reason for a visit — yet it is still measured through words, gestures or a number a patient picks on a scale. Language barriers, cognitive impairment, age, culture and individual pain tolerance all distort the result, and patients who cannot articulate pain at all — babies, stroke patients, people with autism or Down syndrome — risk going unheard.

Aritium, the Asturias-based medical company, worked with VML Health Spain, VML New York and WideLabs to make pain visible. A portable thermal camera attached to a doctor's smartphone detects body-surface heat patterns associated with pain; an AI-powered app compares them with thousands of patient studies and environmental factors, returning a thermal map, an objective assessment and evidence-based treatment recommendations.

PainVisible gives healthcare professionals a common visual language for pain, independent of the patient's ability to describe it. It is already used in hospitals across Spain and internationally, with expansion planned across Europe, Latin America and the US, and at One Show 2026 it took Best of Pharma, a Gold in Products and a Silver in Craft / Use of Technology.

It replaced subjective self-report with an objective measurement, removing language, culture, age and cognitive barriers from the equation rather than asking patients to overcome them.

It aimed at the gap between what patients can say and what their bodies show — a universal visual language of pain — instead of another awareness campaign.

It is a working clinical tool, not a demo: deployed in hospitals, aimed at pain units, pediatricians and geriatricians, with evidence-based treatment recommendations built in.

The partnership crossed industries — a medical company, a health agency and a technology studio — to put creativity inside the diagnostic instrument itself.

When a measurement depends on the patient's ability to speak, redesign the measurement, not the patient: an objective instrument turns a communication barrier into a solved technical problem.

By mid-2026 PainVisible was in use in hospitals across Spain and internationally, with expansion into Europe, Latin America and the US planned across 2025–2026. At One Show 2026 the work took Best of Pharma, a Gold in Products and a Silver in Craft / Use of Technology, and the ADC archive lists it as an AI-led medical tool for pain units, pediatricians, geriatricians and specialists treating patients with communication barriers. Aritium's CEO frames it as proof that technology, creativity and data can produce faster diagnoses and appropriate treatment for every patient.