IMAB-Qi - Work Package 3
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Identification of Medication Adherence Barriers Questionnaire intervention (IMAB-Qi): Feasibility study to test IMAB-Qi delivery and trial processes in general practice
IRAS ID
355538
Contact name
Debi Bhattacharya
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of East Anglia
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 2 months, 26 days
Research summary
About half of all people do not take their prescribed medicines correctly. This is called non-adherence. Clinicians do not have a good system for finding out who is not adhering and what is stopping them. This is made worse because patients often hesitate to admit non-adherence. As a result, clinicians often guess both the cause of non-adherence and solution, offering things like pill boxes or general advice, instead of using evidence-based methods that address the root of the problem.
We have developed IMAB-Qi which has 10 questions, each representing a barrier to adherence and linked to evidence-based solutions. We know that when a patient completes the IMAB-Qi, it correctly diagnoses non-adherence and its causes. We don’t know whether clinicians are able to correctly use IMAB-Qi, whether patients will like it when used in routine medication reviews, whether it will work to solve medication non-adherence or if it is good value for money for the NHS. Just knowing that IMAB-Qi solves non-adherence isn’t enough, we have to prove that it makes a clinical difference. This is tricky because for a lot of medicines, there is no way of measuring clinically whether it is working. So, we are going to test IMAB-Qi with people with high blood pressure so that we can measure their change in blood pressure to tell us whether IMAB-Qi has worked.
To answer these questions, we need to test IMAB-Qi with a lot of clinicians and patients. Before doing that, we must make sure that we give clinicians the right support to use IMAB-Qi, that patients find IMAB-Qi acceptable and that we can collect all of the necessary information.
To do this, three general practices will test IMAB-Qi in routine medication reviews and whether we can collect the right information. A fourth general practice will only test information collection.
REC name
South Central - Berkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/SC/0404
Date of REC Opinion
23 Feb 2026
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion