The P.A.I.N. Initiative from German pharmaceutical company Grunen-thal GmbH has developed an on-line tool that will calculate the medical impact of pain medications. The Medication Quantification Scale (MQS) provides a method for quantifying pain medication based on defined detriment weights for each given drug class multiplied by a score of the dosage. Users of the tool provide the name, dosage, and frequency of the pain medication in question. The calculated scores provide a quantitative index of total medication usage suitable for sta-tistical analysis. The P.A.I.N. Initiative will present the MQS Online Calculator at the 4th World Congress of the World Institute of Pain on Sept. 25 to 28. A beta version of the calculator can be tested at
