PainChek, ASX-listed developer of a mobile pain assessment app that has been widely used in the aged care sector, is now entering the global hospital market via its latest partnership with InterSystems.

WHAT IT'S ABOUT

Through this partnership, PainChek will use the InterSystems IRIS for Health data platform to integrate with EMR systems, including InterSystems TrakCare, which manages over a billion health records worldwide. 

The platform will convert PainChek's custom-built message formats to HL7 and FHIR standards, allowing it to scale its capacity to serve its new markets like the hospital sector, as well as home care. At present, HL7 is widely used in hospitals while FHIR is commonly adopted in home care.

WHY IT MATTERS

The PainChek app uses AI and facial recognition to accurately detect and evaluate pain levels. 

It has been used in over 1,300 aged care facilities in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Singapore. The app has been shown to facilitate improvements in pain management with one study revealing that its adoption in aged care has led to a 20% reduction in the use of benzodiazepines and antipsychotic medications.

Applying the same technology in the hospital sector for the first time will bring similar benefits, according to InterSystems. For example in the emergency department, accurate pain assessments would make triage "more effective." Based on previous EMR integrations of the PainChek app in aged care, pain assessments are automatically entered into a resident's record, making them available to clinical decision-support solutions to improve pain management.

THE LARGER TREND

While this latest global partnership marks PainChek's first foray into the hospital market, it is no stranger to in-hospital applications. The company has partnered with the Ramsay Hospital Research Foundation and Edith Cowan University on a two-year research investigating ways of slowing down or stopping the progression of frailty among hospital patients using a mobile pain assessment app. 

In other news, PainChek is now working on a version of its pain assessment app for non-verbal children with disabilities. Its development has been backed by a $260,000 grant from the government of Western Australia.

ON THE RECORD

"We know from experience in aged care how important it is to connect to EMR systems. InterSystems IRIS for Health makes that easy and scales up our capacity to connect into hospitals and, in the future, other sectors like home care that would also benefit from easy-to-use and reliable pain assessment," PainChek CEO Philip Daffas said about their partnership with InterSystems.