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Article History

Accepted: 22 December 2024

First Online: 21 January 2025

Declarations

:

: Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. No funding, grant, or financial support was specifically received for the preparation of this manuscript. Dementia Support Australia (DSA) programs are funded by the Australian Government (Department of Health) under the umbrella of the Dementia Aged Care Services (DACS) Fund since 2016. The funder had no role in: the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis and interpretation of the data; preparation, review or approval of the manuscript; or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

: M.A. is one of the originators of the PainChek® instrument, which is marketed by PainChek Ltd. (ASX: PCK). He is also a shareholder of PainChek Ltd. He previously held the position of a Senior Research Scientist (October 2018–May 2020) at PainChek Ltd. He had a granted patent titled “A pain assessment method and system; PCT/AU2015/000501” in China, Japan, the European Union and the USA, which was assigned to PainChek Ltd. The PainChek® instrument was not mentioned nor cited in this study. Three authors (M.A., D.W., T.M.) are staff members of The Dementia Centre; a research, education, and consultancy arm of HammondCare, an independent Christian charity which auspices the DSA programs. M.A. is a Research and Practice Lead (Team Leader) at The Dementia Centre, HammondCare. D.W. is a Data and Information Analyst at The Dementia Centre, HammondCare. T.M. is Head of Research and Information Excellence at The Dementia Centre, HammondCare. Other authors declare no conflict of interest.

: The study was approved by the human research committees of the University of New South Wales (HC190049), University of Sydney (2023/138), Edith Cowan University (2022-03715) and Curtin University (HRE2023-0069). The study also received institutional approval (R264) from the Research Governance Office of HammondCare. A waiver of informed consent was granted for the study as the data were analysed retrospectively and anonymously. The data were handled by a data custodian who complied with the Declaration of Helsinki of ethical principles, and the National Health and Medical Research Council’s National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2018).

: A waiver of informed consent was granted as per the ethics approvals stated above.

: Not applicable.

: All data used in this manuscript will remain confidential to comply with the conditions of service provision of Dementia Support Australia (DSA).

: The authors contributed to the following tasks: conceptualisation: M.A., A.S.; methodology: M.A., A.S., D.W. and T.M.; data curation and data analysis: M.A., A.S., D.W. and T.M.; writing—original draft preparation: M.A., A.S., D.W. and T.M.; writing—review and editing: M.A., A.S., D.W., Y.P.L., C.M., G.N., E.W. and T.M.; resources: M.A., A.S., D.W. and T.M.; supervision: M.A., A.S., Y.P.L. and T.M.; and project administration: M.A., A.S. and T.M. All authors have read and approved the final submitted manuscript and agree to be accountable for the work.