Currently submitted to: JMIR Aging
Date Submitted: Jan 30, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: Feb 12, 2026 - Apr 9, 2026
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A Digitally-Enabled, Pharmacist service to detecT medicine harms in residential aged care (ADEPT): A feasibility study.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Digital technologies have the potential to support proactive identification of early signs of medicine-related harms, including changes in sleep, physical activity, and cognition. The use of a centralised digital platform to support pharmacists in monitoring longitudinal health data and detecting medicine-related harms in this setting has not been evaluated.
Objective:
To develop and assess the feasibility of a digitally enabled pharmacist service to monitor signs and symptoms of medicine-related harms in residential aged care.
Methods:
The study was conducted in two phases. In Phase I, the establishment phase, health and medication data from participants’ records were exported into the TeleClinical Care (TCC-ADEPT) digital platform. Phase II comprised a 12-week feasibility study with assessments conducted at baseline, 4 weeks, 8 weeks, and 12 weeks. During this phase, the on-site residential aged care pharmacist monitored all participants using the centralised TCC-ADEPT platform. The digital technology intervention included collection of digital biomarkers to supplement information from patient care record and medication chart with subsequent display as longitudinal visualisations of change in residents’ health and medicine use using a cloud-based monitoring platform; TeleClinical Care. The aged care pharmacist monitored residents’ clinical, medicine, sleep, and physical activity data to identify signs and symptoms of medicine-related harms using the centralised platform and notified the residents’ general practitioners when necessary. The RE-AIM framework was used to evaluate the feasibility of the digitally informed pharmacist service. Assessments included service reach, changes in resident symptom scores as measured by the Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale, medicine use, number of adverse events, cognitive scores as measured by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, sleep and physical activity as measured by sleep sensor and accelerometer, number and types of pharmacist recommendations to general practitioners (GPs), and qualitative interviews.
Results:
Twenty-nine participants were enrolled in the study, with 27 completing the 12-week assessments. The average age was 86 years old, and 65% were female. There was a significant decrease in total numbers of adverse events at 12-weeks compared to baseline (45 at baseline, 27 at 12-weeks; p=0.006). There were no significant differences in changes in symptom scores, medicine use, cognitive scores, sleep, and physical activity. Overall, the pharmacist made 25 recommendations to the participants’ GP; with half (n=13, 52%) being implemented. Five residents, one family member, the on-site pharmacist, three staff members, and two members of senior management were interviewed to understand their views of the pharmacist service as well as facilitators and barriers to its delivery. Overall, participants reported positive views of the service, and senior management indicated an intention to continue using the service.
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that the digitally informed pharmacist service is feasible and has the potential to reduce adverse events due to medicines within the aged care setting. Clinical Trial: ACTRN12623000506695
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.