David Allsopp, Head of Business Development ANZ, features in the August/September edition of AgedPlus Magazine, sharing how PainChek® has worked with clients such as Summerset Group Holdings Limited to optimise and evidence the overall quality of care.
Demonstrating the value of best-practice pain management using PainChek®, one of Summerset’s residents living with dementia, experienced progressive reductions in pain over a period of 55 days, with her typical pain levels declining from severe to mild, and finally, to ‘no pain’.
You can access the original article on Page 42 here.
David Allsopp, Head of Business Development ANZ, features in the August/September edition of AgedPlus Magazine, sharing how PainChek® has worked with clients such as Summerset Group Holdings Limited to optimise and evidence the overall quality of care.
Demonstrating the value of best-practice pain management using PainChek®, one of Summerset’s residents living with dementia, experienced progressive reductions in pain over a period of 55 days, with her typical pain levels declining from severe to mild, and finally, to ‘no pain’.
You can access the original article on Page 42 here.
1. Can you share the inspiration behind your technology’s mission within the aged care industry?
PainChek’s mission is to give a voice to those who cannot reliably verbalise their pain. It is a daily challenge for carers and healthcare professionals to assess pain in people living with Alzheimer’s, dementia, or other cognitive impairments. These conditions can affect people’s ability to reliably self-report their pain or mean that their ability to self-report fluctuates.
People who cannot reliably communicate their pain may have complex and/or subtle behavioural changes such as restlessness, changes in body language, speech and sleep patterns, appetite, and facial expressions, all of which may indicate the presence of pain. In this cohort of people, pain is challenging to identify – even for the most experienced of clinicians – and can often go undetected or untreated, which can lead to unnecessary suffering, behavioural and psychological issues, inappropriate prescribing, and decreased quality of life for aged care residents.
PainChek® was developed as a non-subjective, effective and novel solution to the pain assessment problem. It combines automated facial-analysis technology and smart automation to enable carers and healthcare professionals to identify the presence of pain when pain isn’t obvious, quantify the pain severity, and monitor the impact of interventions to optimise and evidence the overall quality of care.
2. How does your innovation address challenges faced by care providers?
In New Zealand, 70,000 people are estimated to be living with dementia, with this number expected to increase to 170,000 by 2050*. We also know that up to 58% of those living in care centres experience persistent or chronic pain. Effective assessment and management of pain is therefore crucial to supporting high-quality care, but this can be a challenge for care providers, particularly when residents are unable to self-report their pain levels.
PainChek’s multidimensional pain assessment tool aims to reduce the subjectivity often associated with traditional assessment tools. By facilitating pain assessments at the point of care, PainChek® enhances the accuracy and efficiency of pain evaluations.
Using PainChek®, carers can record meaningful pain data, allowing them to address the shortfalls in pain documentation, reduce the administrative burden, and appropriately treat identified pain using evidence-based pain management practices, as well as use the data to plan person-centred care plans. The result of this is enhanced wellbeing for aged care residents, as those unable to verbalise their pain are given a voice.
In addition, the collection of data allows for a broader and more accurate analysis of issues affecting the entire care centre population. PainChek’s detailed reporting suite – PainChek® Analytics allows individual care centres and care groups to identify the ’pain burden’ across their entire facility or estate, and therefore evaluate how well pain is being managed. This can also deliver cost savings: because pain is effectively identified, it can be treated appropriately and efficiently, in turn decreasing the need to move aged care residents showing persistent signs of pain and distress into more costly, higher acuity settings.
3. What distinctive features make your technology suitable for aged care settings?
PainChek® is a hybrid system available on smartphones and tablets that uses AI to objectively assess the presence of the nine microfacial features that indicate pain, followed by intelligent automation (IA) which guides carers through the other observational assessments and then computes to a final pain score and severity rating.
Assessment of facial micro-expressions that are indicative of pain is a critical element of this process. Indeed, all clinically validated multi-dimensional tools include facial-related pain assessments, and it is a recommendation of both the American Geriatric Society and Alzheimer’s UK that tools for social care take it into account.
The PainChek® system is an evolution of the Abbey Pain Scale (APS), which has been the standard pain assessment tool used for people who cannot verbalise their pain in Australia and overseas since 2004. PainChek has introduced innovative technology that extends the capabilities of the Pain Scale, whilst remaining similar enough to allow care staff to adapt to the new tool without difficulty.
4. How do you foresee your technology evolving?
PainChek has successfully supported accurate pain assessment and management for thousands of adults worldwide living with dementia, disability, or other conditions impacting their ability to self-report pain. Building on the success of this technology, PainChek is now expanding into home care by partnering with home care and disability service providers. Work is also currently underway to launch a PainChek pilot within a large UK-based hospital network.
In addition, the PainChek® Infant app, which identifies and detects six facial action units indicative of post-procedural pain in infants aged one month to 12 months, has received regulatory clearance in New Zealand, the UK, Australia, Europe, Singapore, and Canada, with FDA review in the US currently in progress.
5. Do you have success stories or case studies from users who’ve experienced the positive impact of your technology?
Summerset is New Zealand’s second-largest retirement village and aged care operator. Recognising the importance of pain assessment and management for those unable to verbalise their pain, as well as the benefits of point-of-care pain recording, Summerset’s Levin Care Centre commenced a trial of PainChek® in 2021. The success of this trial meant PainChek® was then rolled out across all 24 of Summerset’s retirement villages.
Since then, Summerset has conducted over 30,000 pain assessments using PainChek®. Between July 2022 and June 2023, observed pain assessment levels using PainChek® decreased by 16.3%, with self-reported pain amongst residents decreasing by 21.3% in the same period.
Demonstrating the value of best-practice pain management using PainChek®, one of Summerset’s female residents, aged 85 and living with dementia, experienced progressive reductions in pain over a period of 55 days, with her typical pain levels declining from severe to mild, and finally, to ‘no pain.’
In addition, Summerset’s facilities have cited the following benefits of using PainChek®:
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- Improved data-sharing and more consistent, integrated care plans informed by PainChek® pain assessments
- Decreased inappropriate prescription of PRN medications. Summerset carers and doctors have been able to better assess the use of PRNs relative to a resident’s pain scores over time, and determine appropriate ongoing pain relief
- ‘Continuous improvement’ gold standard achieved in audit following the implementation of PainChek®
Improved identification and management of residents’ unmet needs relating to pain, as well as a more thorough and empathetic approach to those in pain - A more proactive approach to pain assessment and improved adherence to policy by staff
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.
