AI can spot the pain from a disease some doctors still think is fake

When Ginevra Liptan came back to medical school after a year's leave, she told her favorite professor she'd taken time off to deal with the onset of fibromyalgia. "He rolled his eyes and said, 'That doesn't exist,'" says Liptan. In the 16 years since Liptan had her illness so summarily dismissed in 2002, there are still those who believe fibromyalgia isn't "real." There's no tissue damage that explains the pain fibromyalgia patients experience all over their body, and contemporary medicine struggles to treat and even accept an illness where pain seems to be rooted in the mind or brain, rather than a bodily injury. Patients typically see upwards of 10 specialists before they're diagnosed with fibromyalgia, says Liptan, who is now a doctor and founder of the The Frida Center for Fibromyalgia in Portland, Oregon (the center is named for the artist Frida Kahlo, who some doctors and art historians believe suffered from fibromyalgia).