technology
An app that uses facial recognition software to detect pain in the elderly and people with dementia is making its way across Australian residential aged care villages.
Known as PainChek, the tool’ s national rollout via Dementia Support Australia( DSA) is now underway for 150 consultants caring for up to 5000 people with dementia per annum.
The pilot started in October 2017 in WA for DSA-referred clients from residential and community aged care providers with behavioural problems. Results showed significant association between pain and clients’ behaviours.
PainChek chief executive Philip Daffas said the app helped residents immensely by giving a voice to those who found it difficult to communicate verbally.
Aged Care Insite spoke to Daffas about the development and implementation of the app.
ACI: Can you give us a background on how PainChek works? PD: Well, our purpose as a company is to give a voice to people who cannot verbalise their pain – for example, people with dementia or cognitive impairment. PainChek is a Class 1 medical device, it’ s been cleared by Dementia Training Australia. It’ s got clinical evidence in terms of published clinical studies on its accuracy and verification. It’ s based on the Abbey pain scale, which has been well known in this sector for many years. What we’ ve done is automate the whole process and add some artificial intelligence to [ account ] for the risks of human error in assessing pain.
PainChek is an app on the phone. The first step is we automated facial pain analysis using a brief video of the patient’ s face, which is not stored by the way, but recognises the benign micro facial expressions that indicate pain. We then take the carer to a digital questionnaire checklist that guides them about assessing other pain factors, such as movement and vocalisation. We then summarise the score based on 42 test points to clarify whether it’ s mild, moderate or severe pain. Then it’ s fully documented electronically by the cloud providing pain trend, pain trendlines and monitoring to optimise treatments.
Facing the pain
A facial recognition tool that detects pain in people who cannot verbalise their feelings is being rolled out nationally.
Philip Daffas and Matt Kowald interviewed by Megan Tran
What sort of feedback have you received about the rollout? It’ s been very positive. The rollout started, or the pilot of it, last October. That was completed in March. The rollout was implemented this year between March and May throughout Australia.
The key thing we learned from this rollout is that people who live with dementia often struggle to communicate effectively and therefore to be clearly understood by caregivers. When that person is in pain, it can sometimes be confused with aggressive behaviour. So the key learning from the rollout was that PainChek helps carers to assess and identify if a person’ s in pain and therefore to treat the pain in the first instance, which would often have a dramatic change on the resident’ s or patient’ s behaviour.
How has the app panned out? Good. We started off with the Apple version, but DSA use Android for their smart technology, so we’ ve completed development of the Android version, which is now being used by the 150 consultants. They’ ve done more than 600 clinical pain assessments, both on the private phase and now the rollout phase. We’ ve adapted working with DSA and developed the training and education materials. That includes developing training videos, which are actually developed by Dementia Training Australia, which allows all types of carers to utilise PainChek and to see how it’ s used in clinical practice.
32 agedcareinsite. com. au