FAQ

Although a pharmacist is the preferred 'champion' for the myCare Start project, a pharmacy assistant can take on the role of main coordinator within the pharmacy if this is more practical for your team. However, the myCare Start service must be delivered to patients by a pharmacist.  Only the pharmacist providing the service is expected to complete feedback questionnaires on feasibility, appropriateness, and acceptability. Administrative tasks such as internal coordination or communication with the research team can be carried out by a pharmacy assistant if this is more convenient for the pharmacy. 

Note: In Implementation science, a ‘champion’ refers to a designated individual who actively supports and promotes the adoption within their organization.  

No, the myCare Start service must be delivered by a pharmacist. In order to ensure consistency across all participating sites and maintain the scientific validity of the study, the intervention is limited to trained pharmacists only. However, pharmacy assistants play a crucial role in the implementation process. They are instrumental in identifying eligible patients and supporting the smooth integration of the service within the pharmacy team. 

Yes. The myCare Start-I research team is committed to providing ongoing, personalised support to all participating pharmacies and medical practices throughout the study.

You will have access to dedicated support lines for French- and German-speaking teams, and the research team will carry out regular follow-up calls and visits as needed. In addition, pharmacy facilitators will visit each site in person to assist with local implementation, help address any barriers, ensure you have all necessary materials, and support the collection of study-related data.

Tailored training modules are available to guide your team through the service, including practical strategies for identifying and approaching eligible patients, and tips for strengthening interprofessional collaboration.

As part of the study, your pharmacy may also be invited to join interprofessional roundtable discussions with local physicians who are also participating in myCare Start. These sessions offer a space to share experiences, raise questions, clarify communication practices, and discuss how the service works in daily practice. They are designed to strengthen collaboration and support ongoing improvements in coordinated care. All support is designed to be flexible, practical, and responsive to the realities of your setting.

Yes - your continued participation is especially valuable. One of the main goals of the myCare Start-I study is to strengthen collaboration between pharmacists and physicians in supporting patients starting a long-term treatment.

The myCare Start-I research team includes an interprofessional group of experts, including physicians who helped co-develop the service. The project is also supported by Institutes of Family Medicine and Primary Care at the Universities of Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, Basel, Zurich, and Fribourg. These partners, along with our stakeholder group, are helping to raise awareness and share information through national medical networks.

Even if local engagement has been limited so far, your pharmacy is playing a key role in demonstrating how collaboration can happen in practice. You are helping to lay the groundwork for better coordination and stronger interprofessional care. If you face challenges or would like support in reaching out to nearby medical practices, the research team is here to help. Do not hesitate to contact the myCare Start team and/or join the monthly interprofessional meeting to talk about the issue and develop new ideas based on the experience of other pharmacists and physicians.

For the purposes of the myCare Start-I study, all data collection MUST be completed exclusively via REDCap™ (Research Electronic Data Capture). All patient, pharmacist, and physician documentation related to the study, including consent forms and surveys, will be managed through this system.

At this stage, we are focusing only on the five conditions included in the myCare Start-I study:

• Cardiovascular disease

• High cholesterol (hyperlipidemia)

• Diabetes

• Respiratory diseases (asthma or COPD)

• Depression.

These conditions are among the most prevalent in Switzerland. By concentrating on them, we can gather robust and comparable data to assess the value of the myCare Start service in a real-world setting.

If your pharmacy team would like to use platforms such as Abilis, Mednet, or Pharma4 for internal purposes or routine practice outside the study, that is entirely acceptable. However, these platforms MUST NOT be used to record or manage any data related to the myCare Start-I study. 

No, once a pharmacy transitions to the intervention phase, it is no longer permitted to recruit control patients, as this would compromise the design of the study and the integrity of the data. 

Once a patient is included as a control, they should not subsequently receive the intervention. As we are collecting longitudinal data from each patient, providing the myCare Start service to a patient initially included as a control would compromise the study's integrity and potentially bias the results. 

Each pharmacy must decide how to organise patient recruitment and the delivery of the service internally. While not all team members are required to complete the training, experience from the pilot study suggests that involving the entire team improves the success of recruitment. Ensuring that everyone is informed about the project helps to integrate the service more smoothly into daily practice. 

In the long term, if we want myCare Start to be reimbursed through models such as RBP/LOA, pharmacists will be expected to systematically offer the service to all patients starting long-term treatments. In that case, it would be beneficial to train all the team members. To support this transition, the investigative team will provide each participating pharmacy with tailored follow-up and assistance. 

We recommend recruiting as many eligible patients as possible. Our goal is for pharmacies to recruit 30 patients per pharmacy (including both the control and intervention phases).

The most important thing is to make the myCare Start service part of your routine practice, so that every patient starting long-term treatment is systematically offered the opportunity to participate. This will increase the likelihood of higher recruitment numbers and the representativeness of your patient sample. Literature shows that identifying patients with medication adherence issues is extremely challenging. To support your recruitment efforts, the research team has prepared educational materials on patient engagement and communication (Modules 2,4 and 5). These resources are designed to help you approach patients with confidence and clarity.

The consent process for patients receiving standard care (control group) has been simplified to avoid interfering with pharmacy operations. Pharmacy staff are asked to briefly inform eligible patients about the study and to point out that participation is entirely voluntary.

If interested, the patient's email address is recorded and stored in REDCap™. The patient then automatically receives an email with all relevant information about the study and the consent form.

This process allows the patient to read the information at their leisure and give their consent from home via a secure online system. If a patient does not wish to use the email or online form, you can record their phone number. In this case, a member of the research team will contact the patient directly, provide them with information about the study, and record the consent form and questionnaire data over the phone.

The control recruitment phase can last anywhere from one to four months. The exact duration depends on the timeline assigned to each pharmacy. The remaining two to five months of the study period are then allocated to delivering the myCare Start intervention. This phased structure allows for flexibility while ensuring there is sufficient time for both control data collection and intervention implementation. 

Yes. Participants in the usual care (control) group will receive a CHF 15 voucher for Coop or Migros, provided by pharmaSuisse, to thank them for their involvement. This will be issued once all five follow-up surveys have been completed. 

To encourage pharmacies to invite their patients to participate, the research team will offer training sessions. These sessions will equip staff with the knowledge and confidence to present the value of participating, such as contributing to improvements in patient care. 

Participants in the control group will be asked to complete five short questionnaires over 12 months, each taking approximately 5–10 minutes. 

Yes. Pharmacies will receive compensation of 20 CHF for each control patient who provides informed consent to participate in the study. This amount is provided by pharmaSuisse. 

The myCare Start-I training is designed to be flexible and tailored to your needs. Online training modules can be completed at your own pace and in multiple sessions.

• For pharmacists: approximately 3 hours and 30 minutes in total (1h30 for the usual care phase and 2 hours for the intervention phase).
• For pharmacy assistants: approximately 1h30 in total (1h for the usual care phase and 30 minutes for the intervention phase).

• An on-site training session, adapted to your pharmacy's context and needs, will last around 1 hour and will be organised by the research team.

As part of your participation in the study and completion of the training, you are eligible to receive 25 FPH continuing education and post grad points.

Yes, as part of your participation in the myCare Start-I study, the pharmacy team will be asked to complete a few short surveys. to understand how the service works and how it fits into daily pharmacy practice.

The surveys focus on topics such as your pharmacy’s organisation and context, how you collaborate with local physicians, how long-term conditions are supported in your setting, how practical and feasible the service is to deliver, and basic information about your professional background, education, and workload.

Most surveys take between 5 and 15 minutes to complete. Some are completed once at the start, and others will be sent every two months during the recruitment period. Not every pharmacy will complete the same number of surveys:  it depends on how long you are actively recruiting patients.  All surveys will be sent via REDCap, a secure online platform used for research purposes.

In addition, at the end of the study, the pharmacy champion is invited to take part in a short interview (up to 1 hour) to share his/her experience and reflect on how the service was delivered in your pharmacy.

To evaluate how well the myCare Start service works, the research team collects certain information from participating patients. This includes: basic socio-demographic information (age, sex, educational background), how the patient takes their new medication, their quality of life over time, and their opinions on the myCare Start service (for those receiving it). This information is collected through short surveys sent directly to the patient by the research team at five different time points over a 12-month period. In addition, with the patient’s consent, the research team also requests to collect the health insurance data (. All data is stored securely, coded for confidentiality, and used only for research purposes. Pharmacies are not involved in collecting or accessing any patient survey or health insurance data (dosage and box size of medication, number of boxes dispensed, dispensing dates, visits to physicians, nursing care visits, emergency room visits, hospital stays, some administrative and demographic information - year of birth, gender, marital status, type of health insurance, etc).  All of this data is pseudonymised before being shared with the research team and is stored securely. It helps evaluate whether the myCare Start service contributes to improved care outcomes and potential cost savings for the Swiss healthcare system.

More information on the data collection process is provided in the pharmacy team’s educational modules.