Mobile Health Technology for Chronic Kidney Disease Patients: Medication Management

Background: Patients who have complicated conditions such as chronic kidney disease (CKD) are at high risk for problems related to their medications. Often these problems occur because doctors and patients do not communicate the right type of medication information to each other. This causes many prescribing errors and can lead to patient harm, emergency visits, or hospitalizations. To address this communication problem, hospitals now use a process called "medication reconciliation" to confirm the medications patients are taking when they enter and leave the hospital. However, the way that medication reconciliation is currently being done, patients are not actively engaged or given tools to effectively communicate the medications they are taking, changes that have been made, and what they are having trouble with. Directly engaging patients in this process might help solve this problem, and mobile technologies on smartphones may be a solution. Our study team has developed a mobile application (app) called eKidneyCare, which has a specific medication component to help patients communicate their medication information to all their doctors. This app can feed medication information from the clinic's medical record to the patient's smartphone, and any changes made to the medication list can be entered by the patient and sent back to the central server to notify their doctors. Study Design: We propose to conduct an open-label randomized controlled trial to assess the medication related effectiveness and stakeholders' satisfaction of the eKidneyCare mobile app compared to commercially available mobile apps like My MedRec for 12 months. This study will be conducted in the renal clinics at University Health Network who oversee the clinical management of advanced stage 4 to 5 CKD patients and end stage renal disease. On average, patients of this clinic are aged 65 years or more and take 10-15 medications per day. Objectives and Hypotheses Primary 1) To evaluate the effect of the eKidneyCare mobile app compared to a commercially available stand alone mobile app (My MedRec) on unintentional medication discrepancies in CKD patients. The use of the eKidneyCare app will have a greater reduction medication discrepancy rates by enhancing patient self-care through bidirectional communication of information. Secondary 1. To determine the effect of the eKidneyCare mobile app compared to commercially available stand along mobile app (My MedRec) on CKD-specific clinical outcomes. Patients actively engaged in medication management will translate to improved clinical parameters such as better blood pressure control. 2. To evaluate the direct costs and quality of life (QOL) associated with incorporating the eKidneyCare mobile app compared to commercially available stand along mobile app (My MedRec). Reduction in the unintentional medication discrepancy rate will offset the cost of using the medication self-care app and will improve patients' quality of life. 3. To assess stakeholders' satisfaction in using the mobile app to manage CKD. Medication self-care app will increase satisfaction among patients. This study will evaluated if this app will decrease errors related to medications. It is hypothesized that if patients use this app to report their medications to their doctors, fewer errors will occur, which should eventually lead to reduced patient harm and healthcare use.