Adding Pharmacist-Led Home Blood Pressure Telemonitoring to Usual Care for Blood Pressure Control: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Health systems have been quickly adopting telemedicine throughout the United States, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are limited data on whether adding pharmacist-led home blood pressure (BP) telemonitoring to office-based usual care improves BP. We searched PubMed/MEDLINE and Embase for randomized controlled trials from January 2000 until April 2022, comparing studies on pharmacist-led home BP telemonitoring with usual care. Six randomized controlled trials, including 1,550 participants, satisfied the inclusion criteria. There were 774 participants in the pharmacist-led telemonitoring group and 776 in the usual care group. The addition of pharmacist-led telemonitoring to usual care was associated with a significant decrease in systolic BP (mean difference -8.09, 95% confidence interval -11.15 to -5.04, p<0.001, I2=72%) and diastolic BP (mean difference -4.19, 95% confidence interval -5.58 to -2.81, p<0.001, I2=42%) compared with usual care. In conclusion, this meta-analysis showed that adding pharmacist-led home BP telemonitoring to usual care achieves better BP control than usual care alone.