Using a Tailored Health Information Technology Driven Intervention to Improve Health Literacy and Medication Adherence

Although most patients admitted with acute coronary syndrome or acute ischemic stroke in South Asian countries receive these evidence-based treatments, their overall continuation in the outpatient phase of care remains low. Patient from Pakistan are uniquely challenged in this respect because the overall literacy rates remain one of the lowest in Pakistan among South Asian Countries. In addition, a great majority of Pakistani patients often do not understand or follow health prescriptions (which are still written in English). Additionally, due to an unregulated health industry, they frequently take multiple opinions and prescriptions from different physicians. The investigators propose to develop a \"talking prescription\" for patients with stroke or myocardial infarction for secondary prevention. This will enable them to understand their medications better, improve health literacy and adherence. This is an IT enabled health literacy intervention. Physicians will prescribe statin and/or antiplatelet to the selected patients and enter the necessary details on an Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheet.Patients will be assigned to either of the 2 arms--either regular care or talking prescriptions. Follow-up will be done at 3 months post recruitment for behavioral knowledge assessment and adherence assessment.