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

NCT ID: NCT06160102

Last Updated: 2025-12-04

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 110 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2023-08-15
• Study Completion Date: 2027-07-31

Brief 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

Study Design

• Allocation Method: NA
• Intervention Model: SINGLE_GROUP
• Primary Study Purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

Framework for safe drug use in people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities

Optimizing medication management and medication therapy poses complex challenges related to the different groups, actors, and not least the data systems. To meet these challenges, we have chosen a method where the participants contribute actively in the research: participatory action research (PAR). This method involves both the action and the knowledge production being done in collaboration between all the participants, since neither the researcher nor others have exclusive right to the understanding of reality.

Normalization process theory offers an analytical tool that helps to understand and explain the dynamic processes that occur during the implementation of complex interventions and technological and organizational innovations in health care, which includes institutional and organizational contexts and focuses on what social processes can promote and inhibit it through the integration of new routines and work forms in established social structures.

Group Type: OTHER

Develop and implement the Framework for safe drug use in people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities

Intervention Type: OTHER

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.

Interventions

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.

Intervention Type: OTHER

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Users of the municipality's Service for people with disabilities

Exclusion Criteria

-

• Minimum Eligible Age: 1 Year
• Maximum Eligible Age: 99 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Sponsors

University of Oslo

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

University of Tromso

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Vestvagoy Municipality

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Solrun Gjertine Holm

PhD in Science of Professions

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Heidi Wiik, MBA

Role: STUDY_DIRECTOR

Vestvågøy Municipality

Locations

Vestvågøy Municipality

Leknes, , Norway

Countries

Norway

Other Identifiers

Project number: 341297

Identifier Type: OTHER_GRANT

Identifier Source: secondary_id

22/658-6

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id