PainChek signs licence agreement with Queensland aged care provider

Digital health company PainChek (ASX: PCK) has executed a licence agreement with Churches Of Christ in Queensland, which will give the aged care provider the ability to deploy the monitoring technology across 1,000 residential aged care beds.

Under the partnership, the PainChek app will be accessible to the company’s nursing and care staff to assess their residents’ clinical pain levels.

The PainChek licence agreement follows on from a successful PainChek trial at Churches of Christ Queensland (CofCQ) involving several residents living with dementia.

CofCQ executive director of services Bryan Mason said the app had helped carers identify the presence and severity of residents’ pain when their pain wasn’t obvious.

“Rolling out the PainChek technology will mean we can better assess pain for our residents giving them access to appropriate treatment more quickly,” he said.

Currently, CofCQ owns and operates 28 Queensland residential aged care homes comprising 1,900 aged care beds.

Staff training will take part alongside the PainChek technology roll-out which is slated for the beginning of May.

Commenting on the agreement with CofCQ, PainChek chief executive officer Philip Daffas said the company was delighted to be part of the providers transformational pain management service.

“PainChek is fast becoming the new standard for pain assessment within Australian aged care,” he said.

“Today, close to 4,000 residents across 62 aged care sites have licenced access to the PainChek technology.”

In addition to increasing the number of contracted aged care beds, the number of PainChek clinical assessments has jumped from 18,030 to more than 23,000 in less than a month.

The PainChek app

PainChek harnesses artificial intelligence technology to analyse facial expressions indicative of pain in real time.

This data is then combined with other indicators of pain, such as vocalisations, behaviours and movements captured to calculate an automated pain severity score.

The company’s initial target market are dementia sufferers and children who have not yet learned to speak, with PainChek set to be rolled out globally in two phases across these markets.

According to the company, which has offices in Sydney and Perth, 47 million people globally live with dementia, with the level of pain patients experience remaining difficult to assess.

PainChek achieved its first commercial sales of the dementia-orientated app in 2017 with plans afoot to launch into the UK market in the second-half of 2019.

PainChek shares were at $0.031 prior to market open.