Innovative facial analysis app recognises pain in care home residents

Danecroft is a 34-bed care home in Bedford, predominantly caring for people living with dementia but also other conditions such as Parkinson’s and MS. Since April, it has been using PainChek™ to identify and manage pain for those unable to communicate it verbally.

More than 1,200 PainChek™ licences are currently live across 26 care locations thanks to an initiative from Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Health and Care Partnership’s Digitising Social Care programme. It’s working in collaboration with Health Innovation East and the University of Hertfordshire to assess the usability, acceptability, cost-effectiveness, and overall impact of PainChek™.

Rebecca Ward is the Registered Manager at Danecroft. She says:

“As many of our residents struggle to tell us if they are in pain, they can present with more challenging behaviours, and even be aggressive towards one another or the staff. As soon as we heard about PainChek™, we were sure it could help us to provide better support.”

As PainChek™ integrated with the care planning system already used by Danecroft, it was easy to set up on work devices / smartphones. With training and encouragement from staff at all levels, it was quickly embedded into their routines. Everybody has a PainChek™ assessment at least once a week, but some residents who are on ‘when-required’ painkillers are monitored several times a day to make sure they have their medication when they need it.

Rebecca shared an example of one resident who had a prescription for paracetamol three times a day. “We noticed she would become agitated and unhappy around 4pm every day. The PainChek™ scores confirmed she was in pain, so we took these observations back to her doctor who agreed that she needed an extra dose at 4pm.

“PainChek™ supports our decision-making, so we’re not having to guess whether they’re in pain or not. I would say we’re probably giving more doses of paracetamol, but we’re using less antipsychotic medication because we’re understanding their pain better.”

Rebecca admits it has been harder to get the night-time staff on board, because they have a smaller team and she isn’t typically present to work with them on shift.

“I read the notes one morning and could see that a resident had been up in the night feeling agitated, so I asked the staff what they did about it. I had to remind them they could have used PainChek™, and of its benefits.”

PainChek™ has also helped when reassuring family members: “One lady was quite concerned that we hadn’t given paracetamol to her father. Because we were able to say we’d done a PainChek™ assessment, we could demonstrate that he didn’t need the painkillers and that we were confident we were meeting his needs.”

Rebecca concludes:

“Since using PainChek™, we have seen a decrease in challenging behaviours and incidents which would take up a lot of our time and take us away from providing care. I’ve told our sister home [Elcombe House, part of the St Andrews Care Home group] about it because I just think it’s probably one of the better things that we’ve been involved in for a while.”

The study will run until March 2026, and the findings will be published shortly afterwards. To find out more, visit www.blmkhealthandcarepartnership.org/painchek or contact the team on blmkicb.digital.socialcare@nhs.net.