ASX-listed medical firm PainChek Ltd (ASX_PCK) has appointed well credentialed pharmacist Pete Shergill as the Head of Business Development for PainChek UK Ltd.
Mr Shergill is a qualified pharmacist (BPharm) and has more than 20 years’ experience in the UK healthcare and software businesses. He spent 10 years working with Lloyds Pharmacy UK, which included roles such as Director of Healthcare Services building their pharmacy presence in the National Health Service (NHS) hospital sector and with large corporate clients including BUPA Aged Care.
For the past five years Mr Shergill was the Sales and Marketing Director for iCare Health UK/Access Group, leading a large commercial team supplying Care Management Software (CMS) systems into the UK Aged Care and Nursing Home sectors.
Philip Daffas, CEO of PainChek Ltd, said there is tremendous growth potential in the UK market for the company’s suite of products.
“We welcome Pete to the global PainChek team. Pete brings the knowledge, experience and capability to accelerate the PainChek UK business, working with our channel partners in aged care and building our business directly into the hospital and home care market segments,” Mr Daffas said.
“In the past month, I have visited a number of UK Aged Care facilities, including our current trial sites, which are progressing very positively. The consensus of client feedback confirms a very clear clinical need and economic rationale for PainChek within the UK Aged Care and Nursing Home sector,” Mr Daffas added.
There are more than 700,000 people living with dementia in the UK and this number is estimated to grow to 850,000 by 2021. The demand for better dementia care within Aged Care facilities continues to increase as two thirds (around 300,000) of the 500,000 residents are living with dementia across more than 10,000 UK Aged Care and Nursing Home2. It is also documented that people living with dementia occupy 25% of the UK’s 170,000 hospital beds at any one time and they typically stay twice as long as other patients over the age of 65 years.
PainChek UK has recently been registered as a UK company and as a wholly owned subsidiary of PainChek Ltd. Pete Shergill will be based in the Midlands in the UK.
The PainChek Adult App is clinically validated and regulatory-cleared technology that uses automated facial recognition and analysis to identify, quantify and monitor pain in adults that are unable to verbalise their pain.
It is now in clinical use in more than 150 residential aged care homes across Australia helping to better assess pain severity levels for residents living with dementia and cognitive impairment. Earlier this year, the Australian Federal Government announced it will invest A$5 million to facilitate the implementation of the company’s pain recognition app in Australian Aged Care Facilities. The Company has also entered the United Kingdom market through a distribution agreement with leading Aged Care software provider Person Centred Software4.
PainChek has also announced it will be collaborating with Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), to clinically test a version of the PainChek App for infants.
Most recently the Company has confirmed the award of a US based patent for the PainChek technology and a commercial agreement with Allium Healthcare Aged Care facility based in Singapore.
