The use of Patient-Held Information about Medication Version 1.0

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    The use of Patient-Held Information about Medication to support medicines optimisation (The PHIMed Study)

  • IRAS ID

    231175

  • Contact name

    BD Franklin

  • Contact email

    bryony.deanfranklin@ucl.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    University College London

  • Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier

    Z6364106/2017/11/34 clinical research, UCL Data Protection number

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    1 years, 3 months, 30 days

  • Research summary

    We know that when people move from one healthcare setting to another (such as from home to hospital), mistakes can occur in communication about their medicines. We also know that many patients want to be more active partners in their healthcare. Although patients are increasingly able to access their GP medication records, these do not include over-the-counter or specialist medication, and are sometimes inaccurate.

    Some patients use different types of patient-held information about medication (abbreviated to “PHIMed”) to help them remember their current medicines, and to show to healthcare professionals. We would like to find out how PHIMed is used in practice, what helps and hinders its use, and what the important features are. Discussion with patients and carers suggests this is an important area for research.

    First, we will carry out individual interviews with 16 healthcare professionals and conduct two group interviews, each with 10 patients and carers. These will be designed to examine participants’ views about PHIMed.

    Second, we will recruit 60 PHIMed users. We will ask them to talk through how they have used it in the last three months, who they have shown it to, and how healthcare professionals have responded. We will also ask about the important features and why they started using PHIMed.

    Third, we will create a list of the PHIMed tools used / available in the UK. We will describe how they work and which important features they have, based on those identified above.

    Finally we will draw together the results to help us understand how information about medication is recorded, used and transferred among different people, documents and devices.

    The results will be used to produce guidance for policy makers, researchers, healthcare professionals and the public about how PHIMed should be used and developed in the future to benefit patients.

  • REC name

    East Midlands - Nottingham 2 Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    17/EM/0477

  • Date of REC Opinion

    29 Dec 2017

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion