Application for an Electronic Medication Management Support System

Summary

This study assesses whether an electronic medication management support system improves quality, safety, and cost-effectiveness of the drug therapy in adult patients with polypharmacy compared to usual care during the observation period of 15 months from baseline per practice (from 2017 4th quarter to 2020 3rd quarter).

Conditions

• Polypharmacy

Interventions

OTHER

CDSS provides drug-therapy relevant information

External computerized decision support system (CDSS: RpDoc® eMMa Software, RpDoc® Solutions GmbH, Saarbruecken) provides drug-therapy relevant information about participating patients with polypharmacy on demand to the general practitioners (GPs) such as data about diagnoses and treatments. The information is based on claims data gathered from all health care professionals involved in the care of the patient (e.g. specialized physicians, other GPs, psychotherapists as well as data about hospital stays and prescription data from pharmacies).

OTHER

Modification of medication

GPs can add and modify patient's data within the CDSS (e.g. remove drugs which are not taken by the patient anymore, add most recent laboratory findings about kidney function etc.) to enrich and update claims data based information.

OTHER

Assessment of medication appropriateness

GPs systematically assess the appropriateness of the medication supported by the CDSS, which will alert in case of drug-drug, drug-disease, and drug-age interactions as well as other inappropriateness, such as prescriptions with regard to incorrect dosage or Dear Doctor letters.

OTHER

Medication plan

GPs print out the updated medication plan including also recommendations for medication use and reasons for prescription in lay language (also available in foreign languages for patients with migration background) as well as recommendations on drugs to use / to avoid including over-the-counter drugs (OTC) (optional) and hand it out to the patient.

OTHER

Guidance in medication process

GPs receive guidance via the CDSS (e.g. recommendations addressing certain types of medication errors and high risk prescribing, developed by the German Society for Internal Medicine in collaboration with other scientific medical societies).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians Westphalia/Lippe, Germany

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Goethe University

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Cologne

  collaborator OTHER

• Ruhr University of Bochum

  collaborator OTHER

• Bielefeld University

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Wuppertal

  collaborator OTHER

• BARMER

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Petra Kellermann-Mühlhoff · BARMER Health Insurance

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2018-02-09

Primary Completion

2021-06-30

Completion

2021-06-30

Countries

• Germany

Study Locations