Government invests $5M in pain assessment app

PainChek has welcomed the government’s plan to invest $5 million to help implement its pain recognition app across residential aged care centres.

The smartphone pain assessment and monitoring app detects pain using artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology.

Minister for senior Australians and aged care, Ken Wyatt said the funding grants a one year PainChek access license to about 1,000 aged care providers in Australia and their 100,000 residents, many who are living with dementia.

PainChek CEO Philip Daffas said this program will help refine how the app gets integrated into everyday clinical care in the aged residential setting.

“The app effectively gives a voice to people who cannot verbalise their pain and we look forward to working with the government to expand our efforts to do just that,” said Daffas.

While PainCheck has been making good progress by approaching aged care providers individually, further investment from the Government will help take it to a new level in double-quick time.

“Facilitating uptake is going to provide equality of access to all service providers and their residents living with dementia,” Daffas said.

“We are well positioned to roll out PainChek rapidly through a range of training programmes and partners including on-line training capabilities and we will be working hard to implement PainChek as quickly as possible across nominated trial aged care homes.”