Home automated telemanagement in hypertension

Recent studies demonstrated that successful chronic disease management requires a coordinated effort that includes health care providers who follow recent clinical guidelines in their every day practice, educated patients who are adherent to their prescribed treatment plans and comprehensive patient-provider communication. Studies employing telecommunication technologies have been successful in affecting the major components of chronic disease care including physician practice patterns, patient adherence to therapy, and patient-provider communication. These studies were focused mainly on an improvement of a single component of clinical care process. To date there have been no studies targeting a comprehensive coordinated approach that concurrently employs all of these components in an integrated framework linked to primary care. In this study we propose a multi-component telemanagement system providing an integrated support both to clinicians and patients in implementing hypertension treatment guidelines promulgated by the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure.