PainChek empowers We Care Group to provide best-practice pain management

Specialist care provider We Care Group has reinforced its reputation for providing high-quality, person-centered care with the adoption of digital pain assessment technology PainChek across its care home estate in the North and Northwest of England.

PainChek is the world’s first regulatory-cleared medical device for the assessment of pain. A PainChek assessment considers six domains: the face, voice, movement, behaviour, activity, and body. PainChek uses AI and the camera of a tablet or smartphone to assess the face domain, whilst the carer observes the resident to assess the other five domains. This enables care professionals to identify the presence of pain in a resident when pain isn’t obvious, quantify the severity, and monitor the impact of treatment to optimise and evidence overall quality of care.

We Care Group has adopted the PainChek technology, which fully integrates with its existing CMS provided by Care Vision, to enable care staff within the group’s established portfolio of 28 care homes – totalling 1,423 registered beds – to provide best-practice pain management to all residents, from those who cannot reliably self-report their pain, to those who can, and to those whose ability to self-report their pain fluctuates.

The adoption of PainChek follows a successful 12-week pilot across two of We Care’s homes which aimed to embed the technology at the point of care and improve care outcomes through increased visibility and quality of pain assessments. Through the trial, PainChek provided education and training to We Care leaders and staff to support adoption and integrate the modern pain practice and technology into clinical workflows.

An evaluation of the pilot demonstrated strong utility and broad adoption of PainChek.  82% of pain assessments conducted at the two homes contained facial indicators critical to the identification of pain, and 99% of follow up assessments were conducted within 24 hours of the initial pain assessment, evidencing continuous monitoring and increased staff capability to integrate best practice pain management and be responsive to residents’ needs.

Tom Lovell, Home Manager at We Care Group’s Berwick House commented: “One of our residents who is unable to verbalise their pain had previously been prescribed a benzodiazepine for distressed behaviours. Through use of PainChek, we identified they were experiencing pain, and the cause was investigated, identified, and treated. As their pain levels reduced, so did their distressed behaviours, and we were able to use the pain data to initiate a prescription review. The benzodiazepine was changed to PRN, which has helped to improve the resident’s overall quality of life.”

Jack Lee of PainChek says: “We are delighted to be supporting We Care’s person-centered approach to care in rolling out PainChek across all 28 of its homes. Having recognised the importance of embedding best practice pain management for all residents, particularly for those living with dementia, We Care was seeking an innovative, person-centered solution to replace existing traditional observational pain assessment methods that are often inconsistent and subjective.

“We are looking forward to building on the success of the trial with this broader implementation that will empower We Care’s staff, equipping them with a reliable, safe, and effective means of assessing pain and enhancing residents’ care and quality of life as a direct result.”

PainChek now has contracts with over 1,400 aged care facilities across three continents, with more than four million digital pain assessments conducted to date, and is trusted by thousands of nurses, carers, and clinicians.