- PainChek (PCK) has partnered with Ramsay Hospital Research Foundation and Edith Cowan University to improve pain management in frail hospital patients
- Significantly, this research project marks the first commercial agreement that PainChek has entered into with a hospital organisation
- The project isn’t expected to contribute any material revenue however it will aim to validate PainChek’s namesake medical device
- The technology assesses and scores pain levels by recording a short video of a person’s face and analysing it
- PainChek, Ramsay and ECU will utilise the technology during a nurse-led volunteer program to see how better pain management could improve outcomes for frail hospital patients
- Company shares are down 3.16 per cent in early trade, priced at 9.2 cents each
PainChek (PCK) has partnered with Ramsay Hospital Research Foundation and Edith Cowan University for a research project.
Together, the parties will investigate ways of reducing or stopping the progression frailty in hospital patients.
This project marks the first commercial agreement that PainChek has entered into with a hospital organisation.
Even though the project won’t contribute any material revenue, it will allow the company to form a partnership with a leading hospital and health service provider and validate PainChek’s technology.
PainChek’s namesake technology is a smartphone-based medical device that assesses and scores pain levels in real-time. PainChek records a short video of a person’s face, analysing and recording the images which indicate pain.
“Bringing PainChek into the local and global hospital market has been a longstanding goal of the company, and this marks an important step toward that goal,” PainChek CEO Philip Daffas said.
Specifically, PainChek, Ramsay and ECU will examine how a nurse-led volunteer program and better pain management could improve outcomes for frail hospital patients.
“In this study, we’re first investigating the prevalence of frailty and pain across the hospital and then trialing interventions to address the magnitude of the problem,” ECU Dr Rosemary Saunders said.
Dr Saunders said a group of frail patients at the Hollywood Private Hospital in WA will be given a volunteer support care plan that is tailored to each of their needs. This framework is based on previous studies which have shown that patients eat more or increase their weight by having a volunteer engaged in specific activities.
“It could be a volunteer assisting someone with their meals or helping them to go for a walk to improve their mobility,” Rosemary said.
“The Nurse Led Volunteer Support and PainChek Frailty Study provides a great opportunity to evaluate the impact of technology enabled pain assessment on frailty progression associated with acute hospital admissions,” PainChek Chief Scientific Officer Professor Jeff Hughes said.
The researchers will determine how effective the volunteer intervention program is along with the use of the PainChek device.
Company shares are down 3.16 per cent in early trade, priced at 9.2 cents each at 10:30 am AEST.