Australia-based PainChek, developer of the world’s first smart phone-based pain assessment and monitoring app, announced that it will be partnering with Ward Medication Management (Ward MM) to deliver the federally funded national roll-out of PainChek technology to the Australian Residential Aged Care market. Ward MM is an Australian provider of medication review and quality use of medicines services to the aged and community care sectors.
In May this year, the federal government of Australia said that it will invest A$5M to facilitate the implementation of PainChek’s pain recognition app in Australian residential aged care centres (RAC’s), MobiHealth News reported.
WHAT’S IT ABOUT
The partnership will see clinical teams from PainChek and Ward MM team up to deliver training to aged care service providers in the use of the technology as part of the national PainChek roll out. Engagement of the residential aged care facilities, marketing of the training program and co-ordination of the sessions will be centralised through PainChek. Ward MM will deliver up to 350 PainChek residential aged care training sessions and also implement a “train the trainer” program coordinated via its 30 clinical pharmacists.
THE LARGER TREND
PainChek has been making in-roads into other healthcare markets outside of its home country Australia. This August, the digital health company received regulatory approval from Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority (HSA) for the use of the PainChek app in the market, and entered a two-year license agreement with Singapore-based aged care provider, Allium Healthcare.
The company also announced in July that that the United States Patent Office has issued a Notice of Allowance for its pain assessment invention. The U.S. patent, when granted, gives PainChek exclusive rights to exclude others from making, using, selling or importing the invention for 20 years from the filing date in the United States (Feb. 17, 2017). It is also on track to obtain United States FDA De Novo regulatory clearance in 2020.
ON THE RECORD
“This partnership will help fast track the PainChek Government funded program with WardMM providing their skilled resources to support the PainChek roll out across the more than 2000 aged care homes in Australia. Our joint goal is to deliver the PainChek solution and pain medication training to the nurses and carers who look after the 100,000 Australian aged care residents with dementia within a one-year timeframe,” said Philip Daffas, CEO of PainChek Ltd in a statement.
Ward MM CEO, Fiona Rhody-Nicoll commented, “we are thrilled to be partnering with PainChek to ensure an optimal roll out of this powerful technology nationally. We see great opportunity for the functionality of PainChek to support clinical teams to make better informed decisions, particularly for those who are unable to articulate their pain.
The PainChek technology will allow our own team to translate resident pain-assessment data and insights into actionable medication recommendations for GPs via the Residential Medication Management Review process, delivering a more pro-active and integrated level of care for residents of aged care facilities.”
