Abstract
e-health is defined as the use of communication and information technologies (ICT) to manage patients and their health in a more efficient way, with the aim of improving the overall quality of care. Healthcare services relying on telehealth (or telemedicine) and mobile health (m-health) are the most popular e-health tools used by healthcare professionals and consumers. These applications allow the exchange of medical data between patients and their doctors or among healthcare professionals, mainly through the Internet, and are used to provide healthcare services remotely (so-called “connected health”). The most popular telemedicine application in the field of hypertension is blood pressure telemonitoring (BPT), which enables transmission of BP and various clinical information from patients' homes or from the community to the doctor's surgery or the hospital. Numerous randomized controlled trials have documented a significant BP reduction combined with an intensification and optimization of the use of antihypertensive medications in patients making use of BPT plus remote counseling by a case manager, with the supervision of a doctor or a community pharmacist (telepharmacy). The major benefits of BPT are usually observed in high-risk patients. BPT can also be based on m-health wireless solutions, provided with educational support, medication trackers and reminders, and teleconsultation. In this context, BPT may favor patient's self-management, as an adjunct to the doctor's intervention, and foster patient's participation in medical decision making, with consequent improvement in BP control and increase in medication adherence. In conclusion, e-health solutions, and in particular telemedicine, are increasingly attaining a key position in the management of the hypertensive patient, with an enormous potential in terms of improvement of the quality of the delivered care, increase in the chance of a successful BP control and effective prevention of cardiovascular diseases.
Highlights
Despite the progress in the effectiveness of screening, diagnosis, and treatment, elevated blood pressure (BP) continues to be the leading risk factor for death and disability in developed and developing countries [1]
In order to effectively tackle the hypertension burden the traditional healthcare model of hypertension management based on periodic office visits must be complemented by a modern approach which relies on new technologies and which contemplates patient’s self-management as a mean to improve BP control
In the United States of America (USA) there are currently ∼200 telemedicine networks with 3,500 service sites and over half of all US hospitals have adopted some form of connected health to monitor their patients [11]
Summary
Reviewed by: Hack-Lyoung Kim, Seoul Metropolitan Government Seoul National University (SMG-SNU) Boramae Medical Center, South Korea Christoph Sinning, Universitäres Herzzentrum Hamburg GmbH (UHZ), Germany. Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Prevention, a section of the journal Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine.
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