PainChek™

Pain assessment for people who cannot verbalise is a growing problem given the ageing population and the impact of cognitive impairment. These people often suffer with pain in silence. The team developed the PainChek ™ system that intelligently automated the current manual pain assessment process and then used artificial intelligence to remove some of the associated human error. The prototype was tested and clinical trailed which led to receiving regulatory clearance in Australia and Europe. The enterprise PainChek™ App has since been developed and launched with commercial agreements in place with Dementia organisations and Aged Care Groups in Australia.

The PainChek™ App over achieved a number of key goals; It is a world first using artificial intelligence to assess facial pain expressions. It is fast and easy to use within an aged care facility by carers and their skill levels. It can be used remotely without need to access the internet during testing but will automatically download patient data when connected. The clinical studies that confirmed excellent levels of accuracy have been peer reviewed and published. The value and clinical benefits have been recognised by the aged care and dementia groups through their purchase of the App.

PainChek™ ensures people who cannot verbalise their pain will no longer suffer in silence. PainChek™ is changing the way doctors, nurses and caregivers assess pain ensuring more effective treatment. We are extending the design to include PainChek™ for pre-verbal children to allow parents to assess their child’s pain levels. PainChek™ is first in class in this significant global pain assessment market opportunity. There are 50 million people suffering with dementia today and 300 million children below the age of 3 years at any one time. Our commercial model is proven, low cost and scalable. We will globalise the business opportunity.

PainChek™ assess clinical pain conditions through combining the use of artificial intelligence with a guided binary yes/no checklist. This minimises the risk of human error and helps carers consider the clinical causes of pain through the process. This was validated in our clinical research. The artificial intelligence is unique in the pain assessment and service delivery. We have trained the SDK (Software Development Kit) to firstly detect the presence of a live human face and then assesses the micro-facial features of pain, which are typically not visible by the human eye through a 3 second video. The App then translates the video assessment into a number of pain related measures that are easy to follow and act upon by the carer. The ability to use artificial intelligence in a remote (off line) setting provides great flexibility to the carer. The inbuilt light assessment system allows for use in the broadest possible lighting conditions and is failsafe. The rapid translation from video analysis to pain score categories without strong the videos ensures minimal memory use and meets privacy requirements.