Kreshnik Hoti

People with dementia may have pain but unable to report it because of their impaired cognition. Therefore, Dr Hoti has developed a mobile application to assist caregivers and family members identify pain in dementia patients who cannot communicate. The app is integrated in a smart phone which uses the built-in camera to perform automated facial recognition together with certain pain indicators. 

To his knowledge this is a world’s first electronic pain assessment tool for dementia patients that utilises automated facial recognition technology and mobile platform with the view of reducing user subjectivity and hence more accurately detect pain. The next phase of this project is testing in human subjects and hence validating the electronic pain assessment tool.

Dr Hoti is a Research Fellow based at the School of Pharmacy, Curtin University.