Approved Reimagining the medication list - A co-design research study looking for participants

[Pmcenhill]

Hello,

I am a Junior Doctor and Master’s degree student at Imperial College London. We have created a research study to learn more about how people with diabetes understand their medications, this includes tablets and insulin. Research has shown that people with diabetes and their healthcare team often have different priorities and needs when it comes to medication. We hope by speaking with you, we can make the design of medicines information better for everyone with diabetes.

We would like to invite you to take part in a 30-minute interview, via Zoom to discuss your diabetes medications, your views on them and if you do anything to help make the process of taking medication easier.

After this, if you are interested, we would send you some worksheets, to help further understand your thoughts, these would include describing your medications and designing the ideal medication box, with the information you would like to see.

We also hope to bring all these insights together to run a co-design workshop with participants and designers from the Royal College of Art – to make your ideas into a prototyped reality.

If you are interested in taking part, please email [email protected] and I will send you more detailed information as a participant information sheet.

Emailing does not represent agreement to taking part and you can choose to only take part in the interview element if you would prefer.

Thank you for your consideration,

Kind Regards,

Dr. Paul McEnhill
2nd Year Masters Student
Healthcare and Design
Imperial College London

Dr. Ana Luísa Neves
Principal Investigator
Advanced Research Fellow and Associate Director
NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre
Imperial College London

This study has been approved by @Carson_dcuk

 

[Antje77]

Hi @Pmcenhill ,
I've added the official 'approved' banner to your post.

I'd be interested in taking part, is this possible from outside the UK?
I live in the Netherlands, where diabetes care and standards for diabetes treatment are largely organised in the same way as in the UK.

 

[Pipp]

Always willing to consider participating in research. So have emailed for details.
Design not one of my better talents though.

 

[Antje77]

Design not one of my better talents though.

Maybe we can design something together?
I'd like a fun design with kittens or fishes or guinea pigs on it, seeing as I have to look at it multiple times a day!

But yes, I sent an email as well.

 

[bulkbiker]

What about people who take no medication?

 

[EllieM]

What about people who take no medication?

I'm pretty sure they don't need an elegant medicine box decorated with guinea pigs or kittens.

However, if you want to qualify for the study I think you can probably change your diet a bit to make the medications necessary..

Sounds like an interesting study to me. Can I vote for puppies? (I think my location rules me out, by time zone as well as distance.)

 

[Riva_Roxaban]

What about people who take no medication?

Don't take the survey if you're not on diabetic medications.

Same as Iam not going to to apply to do it, as I am not taking any medication for my T2 either.

 

[david4503]

You’re doing a study to better understand whatever packaging design problems may exist with diabetes drugs? I hope there’s more that you want to learn because there are plenty of good design firms that specialize in improving package design for all types of products, including medicines. What problems do you think may exist at this point?

 

[Pipp]

I think if anyone wants to know more about this study, the thing to do is to email the OP as outlined in the first post, rather than derail the thread.
This is a reminder of what the OP said.
‘[email protected] and I will send you more detailed information as a participant information sheet’.

 

[Pmcenhill]

Hi @Pmcenhill ,
I've added the official 'approved' banner to your post.

I'd be interested in taking part, is this possible from outside the UK?
I live in the Netherlands, where diabetes care and standards for diabetes treatment are largely organised in the same way as in the UK.

Sounds like an interesting study to me. Can I vote for puppies? (I think my location rules me out, by time zone as well as distance.)

Hi Antje and Ellie,

There are no restrictions for location or time zone so I am happy to provide further information for anyone who is interested. I am also happy to discuss alternative times for zoom meeting in the context of differing time zones.

As per the ethical approval, as was mentioned by Pipp above, only emailing direct is permitted as an expression of interest, so that that everyone receives the same information.

 

[Pmcenhill]

Hi @bulkbiker and @Riva_Roxaban

In response to queries about why our recruitment criteria is limited, I can provide some further information. For this study - We decided at the start that we would focus on the population who are taking medication for the management of diabetes (T1 and T2). The principle reasons for this are participant time and our specific expertise.

Many studies are conducted each year in the field of diabetes and all of these studies require participants who are willing to give up some of their time to take part. We value participant time highly so we would only recruit into a study when we think we can deliver on a research objective and help to improve care for the wider population. To deliver high quality research, we need to ensure that the expertise of the researchers can provide insights into the research question and fully understand the participant contributions.

This leads to my second point which is that both researchers on this study are medical doctors, whilst we have experience with initial management of type 2 diabetes involving diet and exercise, it is not our area of expertise when it comes to research compared to the substantial knowledge of our diabetes dieticians and physiotherapy colleagues. We have more experience in prescribing and understanding medications for Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. It is for this reason that when we consider participant time and designing a study to deliver improvements in care using our skillset, we have chosen this recruitment criteria, focussing on medication.

There have been trials recently, for example, DiRECT, which looked specifically at the role of diet and weight loss in type 2 diabetes and it showed excellent results. One of the main investigators was a Professor of Nutrition and so the skillset was suited to the study objectives.

I hope this answer is helpful and I am more than happy to clarify anything,
Thank you,
Kind Regards,
Paul

 

[Rachox]

Email sent

 

[Riva_Roxaban]

Hi and @Riva_Roxaban

In response to queries about why our recruitment criteria is limited, I can provide some further information. For this study - We decided at the start that we would focus on the population who are taking medication for the management of diabetes (T1 and T2). The principle reasons for this are participant time and our specific expertise.

I am used to seeing bland colour rectangular . square, boxes that extral, plastic containers large ad small littile bottles ga;ss and plastic.

Looking into cutting downof all the packaging should be more of a concern than having pretty graphocsgraphics like @Antjee77 would loke., also go the way of the cigarette company having to put scay pix on their products might be a idea..

I hope you have success with your projecy Doc.

Pix of a pile of empty boxes that I found on Google images.

 

[Antje77]

Looking into cutting downof all the packaging should be more of a concern than having pretty graphocsgraphics like @Antjee77 would loke.

Interestingly, I was planning on mentioning unnecessary packaging during my Zoom call on monday, mainly my annoyance of tablets being in blisters instead of pots or bottles and insulin prescribed as one use pens when penfills with higher quality pens are availabe unless the patient asks for those reusable pens.
Still, no reason to not put cute little sharks or cool skulls on the packages, pots or pens of course, why not have less waste and more fun both!
Fluffy baby bunnies on the omeprazole, stingy porcupines on the naproxen and a funny pic of a cow pie on the metformin wouldn't go amiss to remember what is what...

 

[bulkbiker]

There have been trials recently, for example, DiRECT, which looked specifically at the role of diet and weight loss in type 2 diabetes and it showed excellent results.

That's a questionable statement. But explaining why to you would be derailing.

 

[Antje77]

I've had a very nice Zoom meeting with @Pmcenhill today, the project seems useful as well to me.
Can recommend participating if you're interested in such things.

 

[Pipp]

I've had a very nice Zoom meeting with @Pmcenhill today, the project seems useful as well to me.
Can recommend participating if you're interested in such things.

Me, too.
I also found it very encouraging to talk to a junior doctor, who is interested in collaboration with patients to determine their needs.

 

[Antje77]

After this, if you are interested, we would send you some worksheets, to help further understand your thoughts, these would include describing your medications and designing the ideal medication box, with the information you would like to see.

I'd like a fun design with kittens or fishes or guinea pigs on it, seeing as I have to look at it multiple times a day!

One of the worksheets turned out to be designing a better medication box, so I did.
I gave the box itself a light colour, different medications in different coloured boxes would make sense.
I also had the essential user information (name of medication, strength of medication, condition for which it's taken, expiry date and dosing instructions) in clear large print, considering most medication is taken by older people who don't see as well as they used to, and even for people who don't need reading glasses it's nice to have this information at first glance and not hidden between other stuff in teeny tiny print.

And I even had room left for my guinea pigs!

Not as frivolous as it seems. I have a friend who is close to illiterate, and for her it would be much easier to remember to take the pills with the guinea pigs in the morning and the ones with the little frogs in the evening.
And if you don't need this visual cue, guinea pigs would still make you smile.

 

[Rachox]

I’m waiting for my worksheets in the post, Royal Mail strike tomorrow so not sure when they’ll arrive. I don’t think I can beat your ideas though @Antje77 !

 

[Antje77]

I’m waiting for my worksheets in the post, Royal Mail strike tomorrow so not sure when they’ll arrive. I don’t think I can beat your ideas though @Antje77 !

Oh my. The zoom workshop is tomorrow if you wanted to join.

I chose to have my worksheets through email. I don't have a printer but I'm perfectly capable of drawing a blank box myself and making a picture of it after decorating.
One of the other worksheets was a medication list, which I simply wrote out in an email. That way it was at least readable, I don't want to force my handwriting on anyone if I can help it, half the time I can't even read my own shopping list.

Haven't got to the other worksheets. Was sailing this weekend and then suddenly the forum was all different too, which took some extra time as well.