PainChek® enables best-practice pain management for New Zealanders in aged care.
Innovative technology that utilises AI and a modern assessment framework to assess and score pain levels in real-time has made its way to New Zealand shores — empowering time-poor carers to identify pain in care centre residents living with dementia or cognitive impairment.
Almost 70,000 Kiwis are living with dementia, and this number is expected to reach 170,000 by 2050. Approximately a third (30.4%) are estimated to be living in residential aged care.¹ Amongst these individuals, pain often goes undetected and mistreated as they may not be able to communicate their pain, or they are labelled as difficult or aggressive before it is discovered that they are in some form of physical pain.
PainChek® is the world’s first clinically-validated mobile app that uses artificial intelligence to analyse micro-expressions in a person’s face and, combined with a set of simple observations, identify the presence and severity of pain in real-time, even when it is not obvious. The app is the technological evolution of manual pain assessment tools such as the widely used Abbey Pain Scale, which has been used to assess pain in people living with dementia for almost 20 years.
In addition to assessing pain in those who cannot reliably self-report, PainChek also helps carers document the pain scores of those who can self-report using the Numerical Rating Scale (NRS). Carers can also seamlessly switch between PainChek and NRS assessments for residents whose ability to communicate fluctuates between the two states, and access historical pain assessment data at the individual, care centre, and provider level through PainChek Analytics.
Since launching in 2017, PainChek has already become the most commonly used software tool in Australian Residential Aged Care, with more than 60 percent of the industry currently using or in the process of implementing PainChek. The tool is also in use across the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada and Singapore. Over 500,000 assessments have been completed to date.
PainChek is now available to all care centres and rest homes in New Zealand. Interested facilities can visit www.painchek.com/nz or call 0800-425-513 to enquire about PainChek.
¹Deloitte (March 2017). Dementia Economic Impact Report 2016. Available at: https://cdn.alzheimers.org.nz/
JOIN OUR FREE WEBINAR | WEDNESDAY 27 OCTOBER
Pain & Dementia: common challenges for care managers
Date: 1pm Wednesday 27 October (NZDT)
Ideal for: facility and care managers, or senior nurses
We will discuss;
- The most common challenges of assessing pain for people with dementia and cognitive impairments, and why accurate pain assessment and management has never been more important.
- Pain-related behaviours and learn how to accurately and effectively complete pain assessments using PainChek®.
- How to extract pain assessment insights at the provider, facility, and individual carer level using PainChek® Analytics to enhance clinical decision-making and improve the quality of care an individual receives, regardless of their diagnosis.
The webinar will also be accompanied by a live Q&A during the session.
All attendees will receive a complimentary digital copy of the white paper “Pain & Dementia: Common Challenges for Care Managers.”
