PainChek has had a productive quarter, with our digital pain assessment tool licensed for use across more than 120,000 beds in aged care facilities around Australia. We have also continued our expansion efforts further abroad in the UK, North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Singapore.
In addition to growing our global footprint, our team has been focussed on establishing strong partnerships across the home care, hospital, and disability sectors; and is continuing to work with key clinical collaborators to build the global acceptance and utility of the PainChek Infant app.
Read more about the latest highlights from the past quarter below, and learn what lies ahead for PainChek in 2022.
Strengthening PainChek’s presence in the Australian aged care sector
Across the last three months, we have welcomed a number of new clients. Comparing the September quarter with the same period last year, we recorded:
- 81% increase in contracted clients, from 223 to 403
- 96% increase in contracted Residential Aged Care facilities, from 795 to 1,559
- 92% growth in total contracted beds, from 66,887 to 128,504
PainChek is currently licensed for use in 60% of Australian Residential Aged Care facilities and is present in every state and territory across Australia.
More than 650,000 PainChek clinical assessments had been conducted in aged care, representing 242% growth year on year.
This map shows the geographical spread of Aged Care Providers (managing over 1,500 facilities and 126,000 beds)
with PainChek annual licences.
During the continued COVID-19 restrictions, our clinical team successfully delivered training remotely to over 700 aged care clinicians across Australia. Combined with the PainChek online learning curriculum, more than 6,000 aged care clinicians are now trained and have conducted a PainChek assessment in the field.
According to PainChek CEO Philip Daffas:
FY21 was focused on rapid expansion and uptake of PainChek in Australia while we transformed our service capability into a fully digital sales and service delivery for future (post-COVID) global expansion. Achieving the 120,000+ beds, and 60% market share, of Australian Residential Aged Care beds is an enormous achievement.
The Lancet Digital Health, the world’s leading medical informatics journal, validates the use of PainChek Infant
In May 2021, we received regulatory clearance for our PainChek Infant app in Australia (TGA), New Zealand, UK, European Union (CE Mark), Singapore and Canada. The Lancet Digital Health has since published the results of a study validating the use of PainChek Infant to assess pain in children aged under one.
The paper demonstrates the validity and reliability of PainChek Infant to assess pain when measured against the paper-based Neonatal Facial Coding System Revised (NFCS-R) and observer administered Visual Analogue Scale (ObsVAS).
Read the full paper here.
According to PainChek Chief Scientific Officer Professor Jeff Hughes:
PainChek® Infant pain assessments provide an automated means of translating an infant’s facial expressions in a meaningful way to assess procedural pain in just three seconds. Procedural pain is very common in this cohort of children, and whilst considered short-lived, poorly managed, it can have significant long-term consequences including needle aversion and chronic pain.
We are also working closely with a hospital-based surgical team in NSW to commence studies evaluating the use of PainChek Infant for post-surgical treatments.
Additionally, we plan to expand the applications of PainChek Infant for children up to three years of age through additional clinical studies being conducted at the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) in Melbourne.
Collaborative partnerships in the hospital, home care, and disabilities sectors
At PainChek, our purpose is to give a voice to those who cannot verbalise pain. We began our journey supporting people living with dementia receiving support in aged care facilities. Now, we’re proud to be working with partners in the hospital, home care, and disability sectors to improve the quality of care for people in these spaces.
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- Home Care: Within the home care sector, we have continued to work directly with partners to design tailored solutions supporting the needs of people living with dementia, residing in the community. As 70% of people living with dementia are in the community, the introduction of PainChek will ensure accurate pain assessment and management is more readily available to vulnerable individuals in the home.
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- Disability: PainChek’s six-month trial with Nulsen Group in Western Australia has now concluded, and our pain assessment tool continues to be used in all of Nulsen’s Supported Shared Accommodation Homes where it was previously implemented. We look forward to sharing the results of Curtin University’s study into the applicability of PainChek in the disability sector.
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- Hospital: We are currently participating in the Ramsay Healthcare Frailty Study, which is assessing whether the use of interventions such as PainChek leads to better outcomes for patients’ frailty during hospital admission. An additional study planned for Ramsay’s Joondalup Health Campus will evaluate the combination of PainChek Universal and a nurse-led volunteer program in improving the standard of hospital care.
According to PainChek CEO Philip Daffas:
We also continue to develop new markets and have continued to make positive ‘green shoots’ progress into the hospital, home care and disabilities markets… It has been well documented that it typically takes eight years or more to successfully commercialise a medical device, especially when doing so in more than one market. PainChek is on the cusp of overachieving on that standard in just five years, and with two regulated products and a very cost-effective global delivery method. This is testament to the novelty of the products we have developed, the unmet market need we are fulfilling and the excellence of our team.
Bringing PainChek technology to more people around the globe
We are moving forward with our global market expansion, and seeing new opportunities emerge in markets where we have regulatory clearance including New Zealand, Singapore and Canada. We are pleased to be progressing with FDA regulatory clearance in the US and are on track to submit our pre-submission supplement in the December quarter.
Within the UK, we are now contracted for use across 3,000 beds with further growth on the horizon.
Orchard Care Homes, a UK-based care home that is passionate about providing equality of care for all residents, has provided excellent feedback on the benefits of rolling out PainChek:
Since using PainChek, we are seeing residents who are more socially integrated, and residents taking part in engagement and activities around the homes. We’ve been able to share the data with the multidisciplinary team, ensuring we are looking at other areas of medication use, antipsychotic use for example, which we have been able to reduce in a number of residents just by ensuring appropriate use of pain relief.
– Cheryl Baird, Group Director of Quality, Orchard Care Homes
Looking ahead
As we set our sights on 2022, our focus remains on supporting new and existing clients in getting the most out of PainChek—and improving quality of care and treatment outcomes for adults and children unable to verbalise their pain.
Interested in implementing PainChek in your facility? Submit your expression of interest today.
