With over 85,000 commercial beds contracted in aged care facilities across three continents, 4,100,000+ PainChek® pain assessments completed, and a rapidly expanding ecosystem of clients and partners, PainChek is set for a year of significant growth and opportunity.
Global aged care snapshot
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- 85,000 contracted PainChek® licences across almost 1,400 aged care facilities in three continents (11% increase on the prior quarter and 55% increase on the year prior)
- 4,100,000 cumulative PainChek® clinical assessments conducted as of 31 December 2023, an increase of 122% over the previous year and 19% over the prior quarter, reflecting continued strong growth in clinical use and implementation
- 92% retention rate for PainChek® customers in the December quarter – exceeding industry standards
- More than 17,000 individual PainChek® users registered as trained across ANZ and the UK
Ongoing progress across the aged care, hospital, home care, and disability sectors in ANZ
In Australia and New Zealand, PainChek® licences cover over 60,000 beds across ~790 aged care facilities. Some of PainChek’s larger clients in the region include:
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- Bolton Clarke – 8,000+ beds across 85 homes
- Uniting Care Queensland – 3,750 beds across 46 homes
- BlueCross – 2,800 beds across 32 homes
- Baptist Care NSW/ACT – 2,000+ beds across 20 homes
- Ozcare – 2,000+ beds across 17 homes
- Anglicare NSW – 2,000+ beds across 21 homes
We are also pleased to have secured new agreements, outside of Aged Care in the December quarter, including:
- Nurse Maude Hospital – New Zealand’s first established district nursing service. Nurse Maude is staffed by 1,500 people and notable because it provides district nursing, in-home care and palliative hospital/hospice care. The organisation is synonymous with quality care across New Zealand. The initial PainChek® engagement is with the hospital, with scope to engage with all its care services in the near future.
- Brightwater Disability Group Homes – a leading disability support service provider in Perth, providing specialist services for adults with complex disabilities. Brightwater is rolling out PainChek® across its 10 disability group homes off the back of the success of utilising PainChek® across its aged care homes since 2021.
- Home Care – PainChek continues its expansion in the home care sector in ANZ, with five home care clients currently under contract.
153% yearly growth in the UK
PainChek has grown significantly in the UK with ~25,000 licensed beds across 600 aged care facilities, representing a 153% year on year increase and 29% in the quarter (the largest quarterly growth to date). A key contributor to this is the positive clinical outcomes being demonstrated within aged care and through government and provider funded projects.
PainChek has also continued recruiting new staff and partners in the UK, including Ark Training and Ash Healthcare, to train, implement and service the growing client base.
Some of PainChek’s larger UK clients include:
- Exemplar Healthcare – 1,800 beds across 40 homes
- We Care Group – 1,400 beds across 28 homes
- Orchard Care Homes – 1,300 beds across 23 homes
- Greensleeves Trust – 1,300 beds across some 28 homes
- Harbour Healthcare – 1,200 beds across 22 homes
- Dovehaven Care Homes – 1,000 beds across 21 homes
The Care Inspectorate (Scotland’s regulator) Phase 2 ‘test of change’ initiative continues to progress positively and if successful, will support a potential national rollout across Scottish care homes, giving access to 38,000 beds later this year. Within the December quarter, East Ayrshire Council and Pacific Care joined our growing portfolio of Scottish clients.
In addition, PainChek has submitted a bid for the 2-year funding of 18,000 beds across 450 aged care facilities to The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), in partnership with NHS England. An announcement of the successful bids is expected in the first quarter of 2024 from the Minister of Health and Social Care and DHSC.
PainChek on track for FDA clearance in the US
In line with our expansion plans for the US in 2024, PainChek is undertaking a clinical trial at five sites in Iowa and New York, and the data will be used in the application for US FDA de Novo clearance.
As previously reported, PainChek has established local US integration partnerships with PointClickCare, Ethos Labs, and InterSystems. PainChek will be attending the PointClickCare US aged care client conference in New Orleans on February 26-28, 2024, and will co-present The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh pilot programme results at the InterSystems global client summit in Maryland on June 7-9 2024.
PainChek granted European patent
The European Patent Office (EPO) has issued a Notice of Acceptance for PainChek’s patent application. The patent will enable PainChek to safeguard the intellectual property of its pain assessment and monitoring technology within Europe. This includes exclusive rights to the commercialisation of its technology across the 39 member states of the European Patent Organisation, until 2035.
Global integration partners
We continue to integrate and work with leading aged care management and medication management systems that cover more than 1,500,000 aged care beds across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and North America.
A notable recent addition is PainChek’s integration with the iAgeHealth Australian telemedicine platform, enabling effective pain assessment and management for regional and remote providers. The PainChek® solution is now an out-of-the-box feature of iAgeHealth, available to all users of the platform.
PainChek® Infant validated with first-time parents
Following PainChek® Infant’s launch with a targeted group of first-time parents in Australia towards the end of 2023, interviews have been conducted to gauge their experience using the app over a two-week, in-home trial. The main objective of the research was to collect user feedback on PainChek® Infant’s perceived ease of use, strengths, issues, occasion relevance, and areas for optimisation, as well the app’s recently-enhanced infant facial detection process.
Overall, parents reported that they:
- Found PainChek® Infant useful as a source of reassurance (a second opinion)
- Liked being able to track pain scores consistently
- Liked the app’s ability to discriminate between an infant cry of pain and a cry of no pain
The more robust infant facial detection process, which was developed to compensate for an infant’s rapid head movements and to optimise performance, also received positive feedback.
The research indicates that PainChek® Infant could be especially useful for first-time parents, particularly during the early months when many parents are seeking assurance about their infants’ wellbeing. Final feedback on product utility, consumer satisfaction, and impact to infants’ care is due to be received in the coming months.
PainChek published in international peer-reviewed journal, further clinical research underway
A peer-reviewed publication, ‘Clinical impact of a multifaceted intervention aimed at decreasing distress in people living with dementia: evaluating the Reconnect program’, was recently published in the international journal ‘Frontiers in Psychiatry’. This paper represents the first instance of PainChek’s technology and research being published in an overseas peer-reviewed journal.
Further research underway includes:
- Decoding study – A study is being undertaken to evaluate individuals’ pain experiences by looking at patterns and clusters in pain features exhibited dependent on pain intensity. The study is looking at approximately 2.2 million PainChek® assessments in its database. The pattern analysis has been completed and cluster analysis is expected to be finalised by the end of February 2024. The value of this research comes in relation to using an individual’s pain experience to personalise their pain management.
- Hollywood Private Hospital Implementation Study – This study involves older adults who have undergone orthopaedic surgery, to evaluate the feasibility and utility of PainChek® for these patients.
To learn more about how PainChek® could enable best-practice pain management within your organisation, book a one-on-one session with a member of our team.
