Developing a package to support general practices to use IMAB-Qi in their usual medication reviews

Complete

Before testing whether IMAB-Qi works and is good value for money for the NHS in a clinical trial, we needed to make sure that healthcare professionals working in general practices were able to use it. In Phases 1 and 2, we have understood what has helped and hindered healthcare professionals to use IMAB-Qi and we have used this understanding to develop a package of support to make sure it can be used routinely in medication reviews.

Diagram showing the step by step process for phases 1 and 2. Select general practices to user test IMAB-Qi User testing IMAB-Qi User testing feedback Co-design an IMAB-Qi support package

Phase 1: Completed October 2025

We ‘user tested’ IMAB-Qi with healthcare professionals at 5 general practices in England to understand what helped and hindered them to use IMAB-Qi in their medication reviews. Because we didn’t know how usable IMAB-Qi was, the user testing was with professional patient actors rather than patients at this stage.

IMAB-Qi will be tested with patients in Phase 3.

Between 3 and 5 healthcare professionals at each of the 5 general practices then conducted a ‘mock’ medication review using the IMAB-Qi with the professional patient actors. Immediately after the user testing, we held a focus group with the healthcare professionals to find out their experiences of using IMAB-Qi. Examples of what we asked them were:

  • Were they able to use IMAB-Qi with their usual IT systems?
  • Did they think using IMAB-Qi in their medication reviews could become standard practice?
  • Did they need any guidance or training to help them use IMAB-Qi?

Phase 2: Completed January 2026

We worked with patients, healthcare professionals and other staff to develop an IMAB-Qi support package to help general practices to use IMAB-Qi in their usual medication reviews. The package was specifically designed to help with the things that the healthcare professionals, who user tested IMAB-Qi in Work Phase 1, told us.

We then used a technique called ‘co-design’ to develop the IMAB-Qi support package. Co-design is a process that involves the people who are impacted by a new NHS service; working together to design what it looks like. Using co-design ensured that the IMAB-Qi support package met the needs of the healthcare professionals it intends to help whilst also being acceptable to patients and other general practice staff.

Participating General Practices

Findings from Phases 1 and 2

Phase 1 summary:

We tested the IMAB-Qi across 5 practices with general practitioners, pharmacists and nurses. Following focus groups with these healthcare professionals to understand their barriers and enablers to using IMAB-Qi as part of their routine practice, we identified 4 key enablers and 3 key barriers:

A table showing the enablers; becoming familiar with how to deliver the approaches recommended in IMAB-Qi, IMAB-QI needs to be seen as evidence based by HCPs, IMAB-Qi needs to be better than usual care, IMAB-Qi needs to fit into existing medication review systems and processes Barriers; patients might not engage with IMAB-Qi, medication non-adherence is already being addressed , not every IMAB-Qi question is suitable

Phase 2 summary:

We then held three rounds of workshops with the healthcare professionals we worked with during the user testing, as well as patients, to design a support package to help general practices to use IMAB-Qi in their usual medication reviews. The participants designed three support strategies to address the 4 enablers and 3 barriers:

Table showing the three support strategies: 1)A multi-modal e-learning module 2) An electronic template embedded into GPs clinical systems 3) A patient engagement toolkit to support practices to reach out to and work with vulnerable and/or hard to reach individuals and groups so that everyone who needs it can receive IMAB-Qi.