PainChek, the world’s first AI-powered pain assessment has secured funding by Gwent care providers.
The tool has been supported by Life Science Hub Wales in receiving funding from the Gwent Regional Partnership Board via its technology Enabled Care programme.
Funding will support a 12-month pilot in care environments such as residential, nursing, and palliative care homes around Gwent.
Care homes providing dementia, palliative, complex and learning disabilities care can apply to take part in the programme.
PainChek’s Tandeep Gill said: “Using PainChek in a range of residential and nursing care homes across Gwent means we will be able to support them in improving management of pain for their residents.
“This will deliver immediate benefits including an increase in the number and accuracy of assessments conducted at the point of care. This can lead to better decision making from MDTs that is shown to reduce the prescribing of anti-psychotic medication, support one-to-one care requirements and hospital admissions, and inform improvements to dietary and nutritional strategies.”
On average, 70 per cent of residential and care home residents have a forms of cognitive impairment such as dementia, with on average 50 per cent of these experiencing chronic or acute pain at any given time.
“This is a problem that is currently not well addressed, and yet dementia prevalence is on the increase and set to double in 20 years,” commented Tandeep. “The benefits of good pain management within health and social care, are numerous, but the sector currently relies on historic tools.
“These are cumbersome to use, particularly with people unable to communicate their needs, and pain assessments are subjective, and may be inaccurate and inconsistent.”
Pain often goes un-detected and under-treated in people with communication difficulties from medical conditions, such as dementia. Up to 80 per cent of people in aged care experience chronic pain.
Their cares have a multitude of tasks and responsibilities, and PainChek represents a quick, easy to use solution to measure pain in residents, documenting checks, and allowing informed clinical decisions around appropriate and effective pain management to be made.