NPS MedicineWise delivers nationwide educational programs for Australian general practitioners and community pharmacists. Extensive searching and synthesis of published and grey literature is undertaken to inform program design and development. However, this formative research process is lengthy, labour intensive and attempts to pre-emptively answer questions that could arise during design and development, prompting a process re-evaluation.

A more targeted and iterative process was piloted entailing: (i) rapid collation (two weeks maximum) of basic contextual information into a pre-scoping briefing document including high-level statistics on medicines or test usage, key guidelines identification and collation of findings from relevant government and stakeholder reports, (ii) an internal advisory group reviewing the pre-scoping brief and identifying the highest priority research questions that must be answered to inform the design and development of the educational program, (iii) iterative work to answer the highest priority research questions with findings provided to the advisory group fortnightly, involving ad hoc search methods and snowballing techniques to identify pertinent literature quickly, (iv) iterative feedback from the advisory group as to whether the resulting work is adequate and development or whether further information is required, and reprioritisation of the work plan if necessary, and (v) completion of the formative research process within four or five iterations. The new approach was evaluated via surveys of the internal advisory group and staff involved in design and development. Administrative data on staffing and costs using the new approach were also compared with previous data.

This approach was trialled for three different educational programs. The resulting reports are more targeted, answer specific advisory group questions and take half the time to produce.

This approach can rapidly provide appropriate information to inform program design. The iterative approach has allowed greater responsiveness to changing advisory group priorities and process improvements.