The end of 2020 was challenging for Australians, but we are pleased to share that PainChek® finished the year off strong. In the December quarter, we continued to bring our digital pain assessment solution to more residents in aged care facilities, and announced the launch of the new PainChek® Universal Pain Assessment Solution.
In addition to the positive growth trajectory, our team was hard at work expanding into new markets across home care, hospital and disability care; and establishing partnerships to accelerate global growth.
Bringing accurate pain assessment to more aged care residents with dementia
PainChek has seen continued growth in the Australian aged care sector, with an uptick in contracted clients, aged care facilities, and total contracted beds.
Looking back over the year, PainChek has achieved phenomenal growth despite the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 saw PainChek being used by even more facilities, with triple-digit growth across the board:
- 151.02% increase in contracted clients, from 98 to 246
- 132.63% increase in Residential Aged Care facilities, from 380 to 884
- 122.71% growth in total contracted beds, from 32,023 to 71,318
At the end of 2020, there were approximately 71,318 aged care beds under license across over 884 aged care facilities.
According to CEO Philip Daffas:
“While 2020 was challenging for many businesses, we successfully continued to deliver with significant sales growth. This included pivoting to a fully digital sales and delivery model that met the immediate needs of our clients, as well as establishing a new cost-effective global go-to-market model…We have listened to client feedback to continually improve our product and service delivery, and commenced entry into new larger markets including home care, hospitals and the disability sector – growing our partnerships in these markets.”
Supporting best-practice pain management with comprehensive data analytics
This rise in aged care facilities using PainChek has meant that more than 264,000 clinical assessments have been completed as of 31 December 2020, a 246.95% growth over the previous year.
This comprehensive and ever-growing database of pain assessments is being collected to develop business intelligence tools for aged care providers, promote and monitor best practice pain assessment in aged care, and facilitate future developments within the app. Our data is also being used by researchers to further the understanding of how pain is manifested in those living with dementia.
Coming in 2021: PainChek® Universal Pain Assessment Solution
At PainChek®, our mission has been to give a voice to those who cannot verbalise pain. We began our journey with people living with dementia in aged care facilities, as this is where the need for accurate pain assessment is greatest given the significant number of vulnerable individuals in this space.
Beyond this, the benefits of PainChek’s pain assessment app have a far broader reach outside those in dementia care. In 2021, PainChek is evolving to become the Universal Pain Assessment Solution for all people in all environments.
PainChek Universal combines PainChek® App with the Numerical Rating System (NRS) pain scale and PainChek® Analytics to enable best-practice pain management for all residents, patients and people living with pain in any environment. This means PainChek can now become the sole pain assessment tool for multiple healthcare professionals in assessing and documenting pain across all their patients, including those who cannot verbalise pain, those who can verbalise their pain, and those who fluctuate between the two.
According to CEO Philip Daffas:
“PainChek is so much more than an Australian Aged Care App. It will be a Universal Pain Assessment Solution for all people – adults and kids – usable by every healthcare professional in all locations. We are on our way to becoming a new healthcare vital sign.”
Learn more about PainChek Universal here or submit your expression of interest today.
Bringing PainChek® technology to more people worldwide with global market expansion
PainChek technology can provide accurate pain assessment and management for individuals in a vast range of settings, from those living in home care to patients in hospitals, NDIS participants and babies or toddlers who are not yet able to articulate their pain.
In the December quarter, PainChek continued our new market expansion developments, including entering new larger healthcare market segments and the development of new PainChek products:
- Home Care: Launched in mid-2020, PainChek pilots with Home Care providers in Australia are coming to a close in early 2021. The findings from these pilots will provide the basis for entering the market locally. Looking overseas, PainChek has partnered with AlayaCare to launch into the Canadian home care market on 27 January 2021.
- Disabilities: PainChek has signed initial disability license agreements with the Nulsen Group in Western Australia and the Disability Trust in Wollongong, which will bring PainChek technology to those people living with disabilities. Our pilot programs kicked off in December 2020, and will provide the basis for expansion into the disability sector in 2021.
- Hospitals: Late last year, we signed an agreement with Ramsay Hospital Research Foundation to assess pain management for frail patients. The study is set to commence in Western Australia in Q1 2021, and results will be used to review hospital patient pain management within the Ramsay Hospital Group.
- Infants App: PainChek has successfully completed the PainChek® Infant Face-Only clinical study, which validates the use of PainChek® Infant for procedural pain assessment in preverbal children. Using the face only automatic assessment, PainChek Infant demonstrated effectiveness in procedural pain assessment when compared against other scales, such as the NFCS-R and ObsVAS. Detailed results of the study will be made available following the peer-review and publication in a scientific journal.
Hurry — last chance to benefit from a fully-funded 12-month PainChek license
“A new powerful medical technology is taking flight, right now, right before our eyes. It offers a new vital sign, a faster diagnosis; it can dramatically enhance treatments, and it can find answers to questions we previously thought unanswerable. The revolution is PainChek.”
– Philip Daffas, PainChek CEO.
PainChek is the new standard in pain assessment, with over 30% of all aged care facilities using the technology to accurately detect pain in residents who cannot reliably verbalise their pain.
To date, 152 residential aged care providers have benefitted from a Federal Government funded 12-month PainChek license. This has given thousands of Australians access to accurate pain assessment and improved treatment, and improved the workflow of countless clinicians across the country.
