NCT06160102

Appropriate Medication Use for Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities - A Matter of Life

• Status: Active Not Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 110 (actual)
• Sponsor: Vestvagoy Municipality · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 1 Year – 99 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The innovation idea is to develop valuable new knowledge about safe drug use in people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDDs). The main goal is to design a framework (routines and processes) that ensures safe drug use and provides qualitatively better services for people with IDDs. Secondary goals are that employees will experience better security when working with medicines, and interact better with people with IDD and relatives by implementing digital support functions. The innovation idea is specifically to develop/improve the following: 1) Medication management: Coordinating routines, procedures and work processes regarding all aspects of drug use, medication handling, and communication between care units for people with IDDs. 2) Medication therapy: Chart review of prescribed medication and gather knowledge about challenges related to drug use in this group. Based on this, we will develop new methods for drug reconciliation and medication reviews to optimize drug use. 3) New framework for safe drug use in the community-based services for people with IDDs.

Detailed description

Changing, developing, and testing new routines, procedures, and communication methods for safe drug use is challenging. The complexity of systems that are involved in medication management makes it particularly challenging to create well-designed digital solutions that ensure good working procedures. The complex issues faced by people with IDDs, as well as developments within personalized medicine, means that it is crucial to build new knowledge, work in teams, and arrange for medication reconciliation and medication reviews to be carried out regularly. Furthermore, drug information must be provided, and adapted to the specific individual with an intellectual disability. In addition, the focus on personalized medicine means that the municipality must develop new guidelines for the use of pharmacogenetic tests so that the doctor can tailor drug selection and dosage to the individual patient.

Conditions

• Disabilities, Intellectual
• Disability, Developmental

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Develop and implement the Framework for safe drug use in people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities	Collection and analysis of drug lists and information about the users. Open / participatory observations of staff and residents during drug handling. Interviews/focus groups with residents, family, staff in the service, GPs and pharmacy staff. Interdisciplinary drug reviews based on the IMM method drug reviews, further developed by the researchers in the project. Design thinking. We use a design process with five stages: empathy, define, generate ideas, prototype and test. This involves user participation and experience to design the most optimal solution for the framework. Evaluate the framework, observations, interviews, questionnaires. Health economic evaluation.

Timeline

• Start date: 2023-08-15
• Primary completion: 2027-07-31
• Completion: 2027-07-31
• First posted: 2023-12-07
• Last updated: 2025-12-04

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Norway