A recent JAMA Internal Medicine study found one smartphone app slightly helped hypertension patients improve their medication adherence but didn’t help them bring about much of a change in their blood pressure.
To conduct the study, researchers recruited patients and mailed them a home blood pressure cuff to confirm their eligibility. The team ended up with 411 participants, all of whom had uncontrolled hypertension and were taking one to three antihypertensive medications.
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The patients were then separated into two groups: 202 were in the control group, while 209 were given instructions on how to download and utilize the Medisafe app. A patient’s medication lists are either manually entered into the app or autopopulated via a link to the patient’s medical record. The app then provides alerts to remind patients when to take their meds. It can also track blood pressure, but as part of this study, the app didn’t sync with the home blood pressure cuff.
Twelve weeks later, the researchers followed up with the participants.
The patients using the Medisafe app reported a small improvement in self-reported medication adherence. Additionally, there wasn’t much of a difference between the two groups’ blood pressure at the end of the study. The app users’ mean systolic blood pressure decreased by 10.6 mm Hg, compared to 10.1 mm Hg among the control group.
The researchers did note that their project only examined the Medisafe app, so the results may not generalize to other mobile app-based techniques. “[T]he benefit of this and other standalone mobile health interventions on clinical outcomes remains to be established,” the study notes.
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In a separate commentary on the study, two doctors (and non-study authors) noted that mobile health technologies seem to be most effective when the patient data is sent to and used by healthcare professionals.
And though smartphone health apps have been gaining steam, difficulties still remain when it comes to integrating them into the healthcare system. Issues like a lack of financial compensation for doctors, patient privacy and regulatory matters all must be considered.
As the analysis concludes:
With these challenges in mind, the study by Morawski et al is pertinent, timely and of interest because it reminds us of the strengths and limitations of current ‘state-of-the-art’ … mHealth interventions. We believe, as many do, that mHealth developments will continue to grow and play an exciting role in empowering individuals to become more knowledgeable consumers and active decision-makers and in finding safe, effective and cost-effective solutions that strengthen the care loop between patients and their healthcare professionals.
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