A caregiver records a short video of the subject’s face using a smartphone and answers questions about his behavior, movements and speech. The app’s AI recognizes the movements of the facial muscles that are associated with pain and combines this with the caregiver 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 in more than 66,000 people. The application is designed for use with the elderly who need care.
A team of Scientists at the pharmacy school at Curtin University, Western Australia, started developing PainChek in 2012. They wanted to find a better alternative to subjective assessments on paper.
“It is very difficult for humans to decode the emotions in a person’s face,” explains Peter Shergill, director of business development at PainChek. “Therefore, the tool applies artificial intelligence and algorithms to decode the face based on decades of research.”
“Overall, pain assessment in people living with dementia is not strong,” says Shergill. “Where pain is not detected or treated in people living with dementia, it can manifest in behaviors that are difficult to control, which subsequently people try to control with antipsychotic drugs, which brings more risks.”
In 2019, the Australian government allocated up to 5 million Australian dollars ($ 3.8 million) to nursing homes in the country to adopt PainChek as part of a two-year trial. “The goal is to improve the diagnosis and treatment of pain, quality of life and health outcomes for people living in residential institutions,” said Richard Colbeck, Federal Minister for Australian Elderly Care Services.
Interpreting feelings
PainChek says its technology is being used in more than 722 nursing homes around the world. Last August, it was launched in the UK, where it has been used by about 1,000 patients so far.
Paul Rowley owns a 24 bed residential home in the UK and has been using PainChek for almost a year. He says 20 of his residents have diagnosed dementia.
“[People with dementia] have difficulty communicating and cannot necessarily articulate what they are feeling, which often leaves the caregiver having to interpret their feelings, “says Rowley. He says the app is helping caregivers to quickly determine if someone is in pain.
For Rowley, PainChek is also an important tool to show the absence of pain. He gives an example in which he and his team were able to use the app to prevent a woman from being treated unnecessarily.
“We have a lady who is very advanced in her dementia and was showing signs that would be interpreted by most people as physical pain,” he says. “But we knew the lady very well and were convinced that what she was expressing was not really pain, but frustration and anxiety, and we used PainChek to demonstrate that.”
PainChek is also looking to develop products for other groups. She is conducting research at a pediatric hospital in Melbourne to help develop an app to identify pain in children under three.
“We are looking at learning disabilities, delirium and end of life, as well as other additions,” says Shergill. “We have a unique solution that can be transferred between ethnicities and backgrounds … users can see the impact they are having.”