Evaluation of Self-management Related Functions in Mobile Health Software for Hypertensive Patients

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the self-management related functions of mobile health software for hypertensive patients.

Methods: In July 2017, “blood pressure” was used as the search term to search for eligible mobile health software in the “App Store” and “Baidu Mobile Assistant” and the number of functions related to self-management of hypertensive patients in each software was counted. The self-designed criteria for grade evaluation were used to evaluate the quality of these functions.

Results: A total of 24 software were included eventually. There were 11 functions related to self-management, including blood pressure record, hypertension information, timed reminder, medical consultation, health assessment, exercise record, family management, medication record, discussion group, abnormal reminder, and daily self-evaluation. The number of software with the corresponding functions was 24 (100.0%), 24 (100.0%), 17 (70.8%), 10 (41.7%), 8 (33.3%), 7 (29.2%), 7 (29.2%), 6 (25.0%), 5 (20.8%), 3 (12.5%) and 2 (8.3%).Among these software, 1 (4.2%)software had 10 functions and 9 (37.5%) software had more than 6 functions. In the grade evaluation, the number of software that were evaluated for A grade in the aspects of blood pressure only, data record, easy to use, comprehensive score, quality of information, number of users, downloads, effect of reminding, and consultation responses was 17 (70.8%), 15 (62.5%), 9 (37.5%), 8 (33.3%), 5 (20.8%), 5 (20.8%), 4 (16.7%), 3 (12.5%) and 2 (8.3%).There were 4 (16.7%) software with 5 or more functionss evaluated for A grade.

Conclusion: The mobile health software for hypertensive patients have preliminarily provided convenient, continuous and personalized self-management functions for patients with hypertension in China. To a certain extent, it could help patients improve their self-management abilities, but there are few high-quality software that are fully functional and can meet the needs of hypertensive patients. The actual application effects need to be further evaluated.