A caregiver records a short video of the person’s face using a smartphone and answers questions about their behavior, movements, and speech. The program’s AI recognizes facial movements associated with pain and combines them with the caregiver’s observations to calculate an overall pain score.
According to the company, PainChek can detect pain with more than 90% accuracy and more than 180,000 pain assessments have been completed worldwide on more than 66,000 people. The app is designed for use by the elderly who need care.
A team of scientists from the pharmaceutical school at Curtin University in Western Australia started developing PainChek in 2012. They wanted to find a better alternative to subjective assessments on paper.
“It’s very difficult for people to decode the emotions of the person’s face,” explains Peter Shergill, director of business development at PainChek. “So the tool applies artificial intelligence and algorithms to decode the face based on decades of research.”
“Globally, the assessment of pain in people with dementia is not strong,” says Shergill. “Where pain remains unnoticed or untreated in people living with dementia, it can manifest in behaviors that are difficult to control, which then try to control people with antipsychotic medications, which carries further risks.”
In 2019, the Australian government allocated up to 5 million Australian dollars ($ 3.8 million) for care homes in the country to adopt PainChek as part of a two-year trial. “It aims to improve the diagnosis and management of pain, quality of life and health outcomes for people living in home care,” said Richard Colbeck, Federal Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services.
Interpret feelings
PainChek says the technology is currently used in more than 722 care homes worldwide. Last August, it was launched in the UK, where it has so far been used by around 1,000 patients.
Paul Rowley owns a 24-bed house in the UK and has been using PainChek for almost a year. He says 20 of its residents have been diagnosed with dementia.
“[People with dementia] “struggles to communicate and can not necessarily articulate what they are feeling, so the caregiver often has to interpret their feelings,” says Rowley. He says the app helps caregivers quickly determine if someone is in pain.
For Rowley, PainChek is also an important tool for detecting the absence of pain. He gives an example where he and his staff could use the app to prevent a woman from getting unnecessary medication.
“We have one lady who is very advanced with her dementia and shows signs that would be interpreted by most people as physical pain,” he says. “But we knew the lady very well and were convinced that it was not actually pain, but frustration and anxiety that she was manifesting, and we used it to demonstrate PainChek.”
PainChek also wants to develop products aimed at other groups. It conducted research at a pediatric hospital in Melbourne to develop an app to identify pain in children under three years of age.
“We look at learning disabilities, delirium and end of life, as well as further additions,” says Shergill. “We have a unique solution that can be passed on across ethnicities and backgrounds … users can see the impact they have.”