| Title: | Programme on Adherence to Medication |
| Project Description: | Scalable low-cost interventions to support medication adherence in people prescribed treatment for hypertension in primary care |
| Background: | Many people with high blood pressure (hypertension) do not take their medication as prescribed. This reduces how well such treatment works, leading to increased heart attacks and strokes. It also means that a lot of medicines are wasted, which costs the NHS several hundred million pounds a year.
Health care practitioners can support patients in taking their medication, but they have limited time and their time is expensive. There is therefore a need for low-cost interventions that help patients to take their tablets as prescribed. A promising approach is to use digital interventions such as text messaging or smartphone ‘apps’. We are proposing that a digital intervention could be used in combination with a brief intervention from the practice nurse or healthcare assistant. |
| Aims and Objectives : | 1. To develop a scalable low-cost intervention to support medication adherence in people prescribed treatment for hypertension in primary care. The intervention will consist of two components: (i) a very brief intervention delivered by a practice nurse or healthcare assistant that ‘signposts’ the patient to (ii) a digital intervention designed to provide ongoing support between practice visits. 2. To evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of the two-component intervention and the feasibility of conducting a (cost-) effectiveness trial. 3. To provide precise and robust estimates of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the intervention compared with usual care. 4. To develop an economic model of cost-effectiveness of medication adherence interventions. 5. To inform a decision on whether to implement the two-component intervention in primary care. |
| Project organisation | |
| Start date: | 1st June 2017 |
| End date: | 31st May 2022 |
| Contact person: | Professor Stephen Sutton |
| Contact Details: | Programme Lead
Primary Care Unit E-mail: pam@medschl.cam.ac.uk |
| Collaborative: | University of Cambridge – Jonathan Mant, Simon Griffin, Cecilia Mascolo, Stephen Morris, Stephen Sutton
University of Leicester – Debi Bhattacharya University of East Anglia – Wendy Hardeman, Felix Naughton University of Edinburgh – Helen Eborall Queen Mary University of London – Anna De Simoni King’s College London – Toby Prevost University of Oxford – Richard McManus CCG – Amrit Takhar |
| Funding information | |
| Funding Organisation: | National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) |
| Funding Reference: | RP-PG-0615-20013 |
| Funding Amount: | £2,118,847 |
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| Further Information, References and Publications | |
| Selected publications
Kassavou, A., Mirzaei V., Shpendi, S., et al. (2021). The feasibility of the PAM intervention to support treatment-adherence in people with hypertension in primary care: a randomised clinical controlled trial. Scientific Reports, 11:8897 http://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-88170-2 |
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