May 21, 2018 – Apps for Blood Pressure

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Anchor lead: Can an app help keep high blood pressure in check? Elizabeth Tracey reports

People with high blood pressure who used an app to keep track of their medicines to control the condition didn’t have lower blood pressures than those who didn’t use the app, a recent study found. Seth Martin, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins, comments.

Martin: They didn’t find that there was an improvement in blood pressure in the group that was randomized to a med adherence app versus the group that didn’t get this app. I was disappointed by this result. I do believe that there’s potential in the future to have a better result if this was more embedded within the healthcare system. That the patients were connected with clinicians and using the data to improve their blood pressure. This is really critical to health, we’re talking about preventing heart attacks, strokes, deaths.  :29

Martin and a team at Johns Hopkins have also developed an app to help people manage their own heart conditions, so he’s a fan of employing technology to assist patients and caregivers. He believes robust and effective apps that are easy to use, transmit useful data and may even be fun are on the horizon. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.