Over 3 million hospitalizations and 17 million emergency department visits occur in Canada annually. A substantial proportion are preventable and attributable to medication non-adherence. Non-adherence to medication changes made at hospital discharge increases the risk of adverse events post-discharge. We developed a mobile application aimed at improving medication management following discharge.

The application, Smart About Meds (SAM), retrieves medications prescribed to a patient from the discharge prescription, and dispensed medications via real-time linkage with the provincial pharmacy claims database. The app creates a patient-friendly list of prescribed/dispensed medications, grouped by therapeutic class, and offers tools targeting barriers to adherence, including pharmacy connect, side-effect checker, interactions checker, social connect, caregiver connect, Xdirectives, pill images, drug information leaflets, daily pill reminders, and weekly dosing schedules.

We will conduct a pilot randomized controlled trial to assess the application’s usability and efficacy in decreasing non-adherence to medication changes made at discharge. One hundred patients discharged from the internal medicine unit of one acadmic health center will be enrolled and randomized 1:1 to either the mobile app group or usual care. Results of our study could provide evidence for the use of health informatics tools by patients to improve outcomes following hospital discharge.