Abstract
This paper investigates the influence of Living Labs (LL) integrated into a healthcare project, reporting on their role in refining the exchange process between stakeholders to address current pharmacovigilance concerns and enhance prescription safety for improved healthcare quality, particularly in the context of polypharmacy and drug interactions. Our findings are relevant to practitioners, researchers and professionals in the field of healthcare, open innovation and digital health.
The co-design process within the LL is characterized by active stakeholder engagement, fostering the development of user-centric solutions. The LL are part of a nationally funded healthcare innovation project carried out by health insurances, associations of statutory health insurance physicians, general practitioners as well as pharmacists and are scientifically evaluated by academic institutions. The eRIKA project has been developed with the purpose of improving patient safety by enhancing the prescription and dispensing processes for medications. LL empower all stakeholders involved to actively influence the entire project phase and provide the benefit for participants to formulate reality-based approaches that directly address real-world problems. Within the LL environment, participants are exposed to challenges that prompt reconsideration of previous procedures, resulting in a continuous and active flow of data accumulation. While describing the methodological intricacies, practical implications and outcomes of LL within the healthcare domain, the focus is on the co-design of a collaborative, data-driven process to improve prescription and drug therapy safety in German primary care.
The eRIKA project involves the implementation of a new electronic prescription form in Germany, aiming to contribute to the improvement of the action plan for safe drug treatment, specifically within the context of drug interactions and polypharmacy. The LL conducted in eRIKA were divided into four sprints; the initial two sprints primarily focused on stakeholders getting accustomed to the process through their participation in workshops. Sprint three aimed to discuss, evaluate, and measure the design, usability, and acceptance of the new software. The workshops in this phase included software demonstrations. In the final fourth sprint, an electronic prescription will be issued, handed out, and redeemed to the test-patient in the prescription process using the new software. It is designed for medical practices and pharmacies, incorporating all aspects crucial for evaluation and assessment, such as the medication safety check and the examination of the medication plan of the test-patient.
As the implementation of the LL within the eRIKA project is still in progress, the aim of this paper is to describe the methodology of LL as well as their benefits and challenges. The data-driven results will be presented at ICIC24. Especially the possibility of intersectional discussions and the immediacy of interactions is relevant for the collection of practical requirements which are indispensable for the feasibility of the program evaluated in eRIKA. The discussed requirements will be evaluated systematically based on a thematic analysis.