Work Packages
Our Aim
The aim of the IDEAs study was to investigate the feasibility of an intervention to increase retinopathy screening registration, consent and attendance. There are four work packages. We will use the findings from these different pieces of work to decide whether it is appropriate to continue to a larger study that would test whether the intervention improves screening registration and attendance.
Work Package 1: Intervention Development
We have developed an intervention guided by previous research, theory, and input from patients and members of the public (PPI), and health care professionals. Parts of the intervention target practice staff to help them to deliver reminders about screening to patients and other parts are designed to encourage patients to attend screening.
More information on what our intervention involves is available here.
Work Package 2: Pilot Trial
We conducted a pilot trial to examine whether the intervention is feasible in general practice. Practices were assigned to receive the intervention or be part of a control group (who wait for 6 months before receiving the intervention). We examined how many practices can be recruited to take part and stay in the study, how many people were registered for and attended screening, and whether practices delivered the intervention as planned.
Eight practices based across Ireland are took in our pilot trial which started in July 2019.
Work Package 3: Process Evaluation
We examined the acceptability and feasibility of the intervention by collecting quantitative and qualitative data on how the intervention was delivered and interviewing general practice staff and people with diabetes attending that practice. We explored their opinions on how the study was conducted including the type of information we collected and the way it was collected.
Work Package 4: Economic Evaluation
We estimated the economic cost of developing and delivering the intervention in general practice compared to the control and conducted a budget impact analysis to predict the potential financial impact of the adoption and diffusion of the intervention.