Electronic health record-enabled routine assessment of medication adherence after solid organ transplantation: the time is now.

Medication nonadherence after solid organ transplantation is recognized as an important impediment to long-term graft survival. Yet, assessment of adherence is often not part of routine care. In this Personal Viewpoint, we call for the transplant community to consider implementing a systematic process to screen and assess medication adherence. We believe acceptable tools are available to support integrating adherence assessments into the electronic health record. Creating a standard assessment can be done efficiently and cost-effectively if we come together as a community. More importantly, such monitoring can improve outcomes and strengthen provider-patient relationships. We further discuss the practical challenges and potential rebuttals to our position.

Removing barriers to accessing medical cannabis for paediatric patients.

Medical cannabis (MC) may offer therapeutic benefits for children with complex neurological conditions and chronic diseases. In Canada, parents, and caregivers frequently report encountering barriers when accessing MC for their children. These include negative preconceived notions about risks and benefits, challenges connecting with a knowledgeable healthcare provider (HCP), the high cost of MC products, and navigating MC product shortages. In this manuscript, we explore several of these barriers and provide recommendations to decision-makers to enable a family-centered and evidence-based approach to MC medicine and research for children.

Video Education and Behavior Contract to Improve Outcomes After Renal Transplantation (VECTOR): A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Sub-optimal adherence to immunosuppressant medications reduces graft survival for kidney transplant recipients and adherence-enhancing interventions are resource and time intensive. We performed a multi-center randomized controlled trial to investigate the impact of an electronically delivered intervention on adherence. Of 203 adult kidney transplant recipients who received a de novo kidney transplant n = 173 agreed to participate (intent-to-treat population) and were randomized to the intervention (video education plus behavior contract n = 91) or the control (standard education, n = 82). No significant differences were found between the groups for medication adherence measured by the Basel Assessment of Adherence to Immunosuppressive Medications Scale, intrapatient variability in tacrolimus levels, time in therapeutic range for any immunosuppressant, knowledge, self-efficacy, QOL, or hospitalizations. Among a subgroup of 64 participants randomized to the intervention group who completed a post-intervention questionnaire, two-thirds (67%, n = 43) reported watching at least 80% of the videos and 58% (n = 37) completed the electronic goal setting exercise and adherence contract. An autonomous goal setting exercise and electronic behavioural contract added to standard of care did not improve any outcomes. Our findings reiterate that nonadherence in transplantation is a difficult multifactorial problem that simple solutions will not solve. Trial registration number NCT03540121.