Following a successful start to the year, PainChek has maintained a strong growth trajectory in the second quarter of 2020. We have also commenced our first pilots into home care, which will empower caregivers to accurately assess pain in individuals living with dementia or cognitive impairments in a home care setting.
PainChek® achieves positive growth in aged care beds, clients and facilities between April-June 2020
From April until now, the impact of the pandemic has been felt globally in aged care facilities. PainChek has continued to support providers during this time, in order to help them deliver best-practice pain assessment to those most at risk to the virus.
Despite the pandemic, we saw positive numbers across the board this past quarter. From 1 April to 30 June 2020, we achieved:
- +18% increase in contracted clients, from 175 to 207
- +23% increase in Residential Aged Care facilities, from 588 to 722
- +24% growth in total contracted beds, from 49,811 to 61,571
There is always a delay between a client signing up, and the implementation of PainChek across aged care facilities — particularly if we are working with a national provider or across a geographically dispersed area. In the coming months, we are excited to help our new aged care providers train their staff, roll out PainChek to their facilities, and begin conducting pain assessments using our platform.
According to CEO Philip Daffas:
“These results demonstrate our ability to continue significant growth of the business during these difficult times. The PainChek digital technology has provided the platform to continue sales and implementation within Aged Care and, most importantly, provide a safe clinical tool for carers and their residents. The proven PainChek technology and remote digital capability provides the basis for rapid global market expansion with a lower delivery cost.”
Outstanding year-on-year growth for FY19 to FY20
June also marked the end of the 2019/2020 financial year. Over the past 12 months, PainChek has achieved outstanding growth year-on-year — and more aged care residents are benefitting from accurate pain assessment and treatment, and improved quality of life as a result.
This growth means PainChek is the most commonly used digital clinical tool in Australian residential aged care.
Accelerating digital capabilities during COVID-19
COVID-19 has drastically impacted healthcare providers in Australia and accelerated the need for digital solutions. With a number of aged care homes forced to go into lockdown and fewer staff available to care for residents(1), the pandemic has revealed the critical need for technology that helps protect those most vulnerable to the disease — whilst simultaneously ensuring carers are not overworked.
During the first half of the year, PainChek successfully pivoted to using our remote digital capabilities to continue delivering accurate and reliable pain assessment to our clients around the world. From virtual meetings with providers to remote onboarding, training and technical support, our digital capabilities allow us to support care providers in delivering accurate pain assessment while being fully compliant with best practice COVID-19 protection measures.
Watch this quick video to see how PainChek harnesses technology to support providers at every stage of their digitalisation journey:
PainChek commences pilot trials in home care market
Approximately 500,000 Australians are living with dementia, and 70% are living in the community. These individuals receive home care, which enables them to live independently for longer whilst receiving appropriate treatment.
However, living in a home care setting also presents a unique set of challenges. Individuals often have multiple caregivers, including family members, GPs and case managers. This often leads to inconsistent assessment and subsequent treatment plans, as each caregiver may have a different pain assessment method and family members are often not trained to identify signs of chronic pain.
PainChek empowers caregivers with a clinically proven, intuitive tool that enables accurate pain assessment across all caregivers, and ensures continuity of care between healthcare professionals and care staff.
Over the past quarter, we have been exploring the use of our adult app in a home care setting. Pilot trials are currently underway with three leading home care providers, which will support the launch of our pain management app in a home care setting both in Australia and overseas.
Read more about our home care trials here.
Providing universal access to PainChek as part of the Federal Government initiative
At the end of 2019, the Federal Government committed $5M to fund a national roll-out of PainChek to residential aged care providers. This initiative will provide a universal PainChek access license for more than 1,000 aged care providers in Australia and their 100,000 residents living with dementia or cognitive impairments.
To date, we have supported 107 residential aged care providers to fully implement PainChek in their 278 facilities across the country. In turn, we have given thousands of Australians access to accurate pain assessment and improved treatment.
The Federal Government initiative is available to all Australian residential aged care providers that have residents living with dementia or cognitive impairments. Register your interest today by filling out this form or calling 1800 098 809.
Looking ahead: future expansion plans and trials
Like all Australians, we have experienced challenges in the last quarter as a result of the pandemic. However, as a digital healthcare business, PainChek was well-placed to navigate these difficulties. We have emerged more agile, more digital.
The second half of the year will see continued implementation of PainChek into aged care facilities across the country, as well as the outcomes of our home care pilots. In addition, we expect to have a clearer path to obtain FDA de novo regulatory clearance into the US and Canada, and will continue to explore new global expansion opportunities and healthcare segments with our partners at Philips Healthcare, Melbourne’s Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and more.
