User-Centered, Web-based Portal to Support Regimen Adherence in Transplant

Medication adherence is a major challenge to among organ transplant recipients, and is the leading cause of graft failure among kidney and liver transplant recipients. Furthermore, studies among primary care patients have found that health literacy is an important risk factor for medication adherence, and that the use of simple, plain-language medication information can improve medication adherence. Thus far, interventions to improve medication self-management among solid organ transplant recipients have had limited success. This proposal will build upon a substantial evidence base of many individual intervention components in primary care to develop a multifaceted web portal to help new organ transplant recipients engage in self-care and manage communications with health care providers. We will develop a user-centered communications tool that will leverage electronic healthcare records and common technologies (website, SMS text) to improve medication adherence among transplant recipients. We will use a community-based participatory research approach to design and develop the prototype of a web-based Transplant Patient Portal to help new transplant recipients engage in self-management of their complex medication regimens.