PictureRx: Improving Medication Safety in Health Disparity Populations

Medication safety is an important concern in hospital Emergency Departments (EDs), which provide approximately 136 million patient visits annually in the US. An accurate list of the patient's medications is often needed to inform medical decision-making. Moreover, health care facilities are required to provide patients with an accurate, reconciled list of their medications upon completion of the visit. However, for 37-87% of patients in the ED, errors are present in the documented medication list, and patients often leave without an updated list of their medications or a good understanding of their self-care instructions. This increases the risk of harmful adverse drug events. Health disparity populations, who are more likely to seek care in EDs and who more often have difficulty providing a complete medication history, are disproportionately affected.

Health information technology has the potential to improve medication safety in this setting. PictureRx is an internet-based platform designed to improve medication management in vulnerable populations. It allows users to generate illustrated medication lists in an easily-understood, patient-centered format, in either English or Spanish. The investigators have developed a process for importing prescription fill data from the Surescripts Medication History service, which covers 96% of US pharmacies, into the PictureRx platform. The investigators are developing a mobile tablet PC-based medication history platform that receives and processes the Surescripts data, as well as prompts verification and additional information about the medication regimen.

This trial will assess the effect of the PictureRx medication history platform on the accuracy and efficiency of the medication reconciliation process, as well as patient understanding and satisfaction, in hospital Emergency Departments.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Medication Reconciliation
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: PictureRx medication history platform

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 488
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Ohio
    • Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, 45267
      • University of Cincinnatti

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Prescribed one or more prescription medications

Exclusion Criteria:

• Too ill to complete informed consent process

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
• Allocation: Non-Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: PictureRx; PictureRx medication history platform	Other: PictureRx medication history platform; Tablet PC-based tool to take more complete and accurate medication history
No Intervention: Usual care; Usual medication history process

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Number of Participants With Changes/Updates in Medication List	Participants for whom nurses made updates or corrections to the medication history in electronic health record	1 day

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Patient Understanding	Assessment of patient understanding of their medication regimen using 4 questions: I understand what medicines I am supposed to take.; I understand how much medicine I am supposed to take at a time.; I understand what time of day to take each of my medicines.; I understand what each of my medicines is for. Participants had the following response options: Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree Due to formatting restrictions on this site and the results being nearly identical for each question, only answers to question 1 are reported below.	1 week

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: PictureRx, LLC
• Collaborators: University of Cincinnati
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Dane Boyington, Ph.D., PictureRx, LLC

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: April 1, 2015
• Primary Completion (Actual): March 1, 2016
• Study Completion (Actual): March 1, 2016

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: November 9, 2014
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 12, 2014
• First Posted (Estimate): November 13, 2014

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): July 7, 2017
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: July 5, 2017
• Last Verified: July 1, 2017

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 5R44MD004048-04 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)