To be most effective, interventions focusing on enhancing adherence should be evidence-based and provided in a personalized manner. To identify personal issues with adherence in patients using inhaled medication, the Test of Adherence to Inhalers (TAI) has been developed. However, the TAI only identifies the problems, not the solutions. To guide these solutions, MAECON has developed the “TAI Toolkit” that can be used as “desktop helper” for doctors, nurses and pharmacists. The TAI Toolkit is based on an extensive literature review of adherence interventions evaluated in RCTs and can support healthcare professionals in practical, effective and efficient tailoring of the right intervention to each patient’s adherence need. As part of its development, the TAI Toolkit has been evaluated by a multidisciplinary panel of healthcare professionals using the validated System Usability Scale (SUS) and this evaluation was positive. Additionally, the final report of the TAI Toolkit development was discussed in an Advisory Board meeting. During the meeting, the TAI Toolkit was identified as a very practical tool with a strong theoretical foundation. Yet, to inform scale-up, its optimal format, usability and implementation needed to be further explored by a field study in daily clinical practice. This field study has been completed and includes around 80 patients and eight healthcare professionals recruited among four primary care centers and four hospitals in the Netherlands. Furthermore, it was adapted for local use and tested in a low-resource setting, i.e., Kyrgyzstan. In both studies, it showed high usability but also a need for a pocket version and a digital version of the TAI Toolkit was expressed. On both new products, MAECON is currently working on.
Funding: Chiesi, Italy
