Amsterdam Telemonitoring And Hypertension Initiative

In the Netherlands 30% of the adult population is hypertensive. Many of these patients are still untreated or uncontrolled despite blood pressure medication, leading to considerable morbidity and associated high health care costs. Self-management of hypertension combined with telehealth monitoring and behaviour modification has been proven to improve hypertension control.

This public private partnership between Amsterdam UMC location AMC, AHTI (Amsterdam Health and Technology Institute) and Heart for Health ICT (Part of Cardiologie Centra Nederland) brings together 3 healthcare partners that will develop a novel self-management tool with an automated and intelligent patient triaging and treatment system for the management of hypertension.

After this research project, treatment of hypertensive patients can be personalised based on the results of self-measurements in combination with smart algorithms. Through this approach it is expected that significantly more people will have controlled hypertension with equal or lower healthcare costs because it is expected that the personalised care will improve adherence and decreases the number of practice visits. Currently, an algorithm has been developed that automatically generates a cardiovascular risk estimation and a treatment advice based on recent national guidelines and on input provided by both patient and doctor.

Testing of this tool by the researchers and 5 general practitioners showed that the computerised algorithm generated a cardiovascular risk estimation and treatment advice that can be safely applied in a patient population with different cardiovascular risk. Now the team is working on the usability and integration of the tool in the information systems of the GP’s. Next, it will be investigated whether historical data can be used for the development of a working machine learning process that is able to provide input on treatment decisions and patient adherence.