PainChek’s is set for another year of rapid international growth, with several key highlights to report over the past quarter:
- Continued expansion in the home care sector, with Anglicare SA, a longstanding residential aged care client of PainChek, becoming PainChek’s newest and largest home care client with 2,100 licences contracted.
- A PainChek® pilot program has commenced at Royal Edinburgh Hospital, paving the way for broader adoption across Scotland and the UK.
- US FDA de Novo clinical validation study results have been submitted, with the FDA clearance decision expected by May 2025.
Global aged care snapshot
- 96,595 global contracted PainChek licences across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Canada, a 22% increase on the year prior.
- 8,690,000 cumulative PainChek® clinical assessments conducted as at 31 December 2024, an increase of 111% over the previous year.
- 85-90% retention rate for PainChek customers over the past year, with more than 50% of existing clients now having been working with PainChek for more than 3 years. This reflects PainChek’s integrated partnership approach, which includes expert consultancy, training, and data-driven insights to help organisations to deliver best-practice pain management and align with evolving care standards.
Progress across ANZ aged care & home care sectors
In Australia and New Zealand, PainChek® licences cover over 60,000 beds, representing approximately 30% of the aged care sector as well as new home care and hospital clients.
Anglicare SA, South Australia’s largest social services provider and long-time residential aged care client, has become PainChek’s largest home care client with 2,100 home care licences contracted. This highlights the growing relevance of PainChek in the home care sector, which spans over 272,000 licences.
Building on the well-established partnership with AlayaCare in the residential aged care space, PainChek is extending its integration into AlayaCare’s home care solution, AlayaCare Cloud, set for release in February. As the largest provider of home care software in both the ANZ and Canadian regions, this partnership with AlayaCare will help drive rapid growth in the home care sector.
At the NZACA conference in Auckland, PainChek was invited to speak on a panel about the potential of AI to improve healthcare in New Zealand. The presentation focused on how PainChek’s AI-enabled solution can assist in care delivery and improve outcomes. This sparked renewed interest in PainChek, leading to agreements with four new providers in New Zealand during the quarter.
PainChek is also expanding into the disability sector with a pilot program underway with SACare, a leading disability and community provider in South Australia. SACare is part of the OnCall Group Australia, covering Victoria and Queensland with over 1,200 licences.
Recently PainChek also announced a new strategic partnership with BestMed, which provides medication management for over 100,000 residents across 1,100 Australian aged care homes. Under this new partnership, BESTMED will offer PainChek® to its entire network, expanding on the existing integration between the two solutions. This will broaden access to PainChek’s innovative pain management technology in the residential aged care and home care sectors.
In addition, ANZ clients have welcomed new PainChek activation agreements. These agreements provide time to implement licences and train users before their contract’s start date, resulting in faster onboarding, process transformation, and return on investment for clients.
Hospital pilot program commences, growth continues across the UK
A PainChek® pilot program at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary has begun following the successful integration of the TrakCare electronic medical records system by InterSystems. This integration allows pain data collected from PainChek® assessments completed by Specialist Pain Nurses in various wards to be seamlessly transferred into TrakCare. This process supports clinicians in making informed decisions regarding patient care. A successful pilot will pave the way for broader adoption across Scotland and the UK.
Bracebridge Care Group, an award-winning provider of residential and nursing dementia care, has signed on for 1,062 beds. Pilots are also in place at Avery Healthcare, Maria Mallaband Care Group, Methodist Homes, Aria Care, and the Caron Group. These pilots, once fully implemented, will cover a total of 20,667 beds.
The Scottish Government is conducting a cost-benefit analysis of participating care homes, in collaboration with the Scottish Care Inspectorate. Edinburgh Napier University will complete the study by April, with findings to be presented in a ministerial briefing. The findings, along with the Care Inspectorate’s evaluation of PainChek, will be presented to the Scottish Government in a ministerial briefing, and discussions are underway for further expansion across Scotland, providing access to over 30,000 beds.
PainChek was featured in The Sunday Times, highlighting how AI is transforming care homes. The article showcases PainChek as a key innovation that helps care staff better assess and manage pain in dementia patients. Read the full article here.
In November, PainChek was showcased at the UK Dementia Congress, where Care UK, the third-largest care provider in the UK, shared outcomes from five homes in Suffolk. Their findings showed that using PainChek for pain management led to less distress and reduced use of psychotropic medication in dementia patients. Care UK has since expanded to over 15 homes and is continuing to evaluate PainChek on a larger scale.
On the operations side, PainChek’s “train the trainer” strategy has helped speed up implementations with larger groups, including Oakland Care (657 beds), Renaissance (267 beds), and Sandstone (640 beds).
US FDA clearance decision on track for May 2025
PainChek’s US FDA de Novo clinical validation study results have been submitted, with the FDA clearance decision expected by May 2025. This is a key milestone, as FDA approval will allow PainChek to expand into the US, the world’s largest healthcare market with 2,000,000 long-term care beds.
Clearance is expected in the first half of 2025, which would make PainChek the first FDA-approved pain assessment app in the US. We have already established US partners to help PainChek rapidly enter the market, with additional local partnerships in the works.
New improvements for PainChek Infant
PainChek Infant’s initial phase of testing with Australian parents has been successfully completed, leading to ongoing learnings and app improvements.
With PainChek Infant, the world’s first AI-enabled app for infant pain assessment and monitoring, parents and caregivers of infants aged 1-12 months can:
- Instantly assess their baby’s pain level using their smartphone
- Make timely, confident decisions about their baby’s care
- Know exactly when pain relief is needed (and when it’s not)
- Track patterns and treatment effectiveness over time
PainChek Infant is ideal for use in situations such as:
- Unexplained crying, fussiness, or colic
- Post-immunisation discomfort
- Teething pain
- Pain following medical procedures or surgery
- Tracking treatment effectiveness
- Sharing accurate information with healthcare providers
Learn more and register for the PainChek Infant Early Access Program here.
Other business updates
Global integration partners
Integration agreements have been signed with Camascope, Electronic Medication Admission Record (eMAR) provider and Carebeans, a Care Management System (CMS) provider, in the UK.
PainChek integrates and works with aged care management and medication management systems covering more than XX aged care beds in Australia, XX beds in New Zealand, XX beds in the UK & Ireland, and XX beds in North America.
Research & development
PainChek Children Disabilities App: The research collaboration agreement for the development of an innovative pain assessment tool for non-verbal children with disabilities has been signed with The Kids and Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH), which is part of the Child and Adolescent Health Service, made possible by a $392,820 grant from the Western Australian Government’s Future Health Research and Innovation Fund.
The project is expected to be finished in about two years.
As previously reported, two Hollywood Private Hospital (WA) based research projects are underway:
- Improving pain assessment for hospitalised older adults following orthopaedic surgery using a technology-driven pain assessment: An effectiveness-implementation pilot study. The manuscript covering the effectiveness of the PainChek training is under review by the Journal of Medical and Internet Research, with data analysis of the implementation phase continuing.
- Improving pain assessment for hospitalised older adults using a technology-driven pain assessment: An effectiveness-implementation pilot study. A project has been established and ethical approval obtained for an effectiveness-implementation pilot study to improve pain assessment for hospitalised older adults with cognitive impairment in the general medical ward using a technology-driven pain assessment tool. This will commence in February 2025.
Additional clinical studies underway include:
- Improving pain assessment for patients with cognitive impairment in the emergency department using a technology-driven app that incorporates artificial intelligence: The study assessing the feasibility of using PainChek in the hospital emergency department (ED) has commenced at Sir Charles Gairdner and Fiona Stanley Hospitals in Western Australia.
- Evaluating the feasibility of the PainChek® Universal App as a pain assessment tool among patients in the geriatric ward in Singapore General Hospital (SGH): Grant funding has been obtained for the implementation study of PainChek within a Geriatric/Rehabilitation Ward at Singapore General Hospital, Singapore.
- PainChek® Infant: Assessment of Psychometric Properties in Neonates: The study aims to evaluate the validity of PainChek Infant for the assessment of pain in neonates undergoing frenectomy. Data collection is progressing.
- German market: The collaborative work with the University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSBI) Bielefeld, Germany includes the validation of the German version of PainChek in a German aged care setting. PainChek will be validated against the German version of the Pain in Advanced Dementia scale (PAINAD-G) also known as Beurteilung von Schmerz bei Demenz (BESD), which is a widely used pain assessment tool used in people living with advanced dementia in Germany with data collection now envisaged to commence February 2025.
Recent PainChek related publications
- Srivastava A, Marabelli M, Blanch-Hartigan D, Moriarty J, Carey E, Persky S, Torous J. The Present and Future of AI: Ethical Issues and Research Opportunities. Communications of the Association for Information Systems. 2025;56(1):9.
- Sada F, Chivers P, Cecelia S, Statovci S, Ukperaj K, Hughes J, Hoti K. Parental Assessment of Postsurgical Pain in Infants at Home Using Artificial Intelligence–Enabled and Observer-Based Tools: Construct Validity and Clinical Utility Evaluation Study. JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting. 2024 Dec 3;7(1):e64669.
- Mimoso I, Figueiredo T, Midão L, Carrilho J, Henriques DV, Alves S, Duarte N, Bessa MJ, Facal D, Felpete A, Fidalgo JM. Co-Creation in the Development of Digital Therapeutics: A Narrative Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2024 Nov 28;21(12):1589.
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.
