Background: Hypertension is prevalent in Singapore and is a major risk factor for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality and increased health care costs. Strategies to lower blood pressure include lifestyle modifications and home blood pressure monitoring. Nonetheless, adherence to home blood pressure monitoring remains low. This protocol details an algorithm for remote management of primary care patients with hypertension.
Objective: The objective of this study was to determine whether wireless home blood pressure monitoring with or without financial incentives is more effective at reducing systolic blood pressure than nonwireless home blood pressure monitoring (usual care).
Methods: This study was designed as a randomized controlled open-label superiority study. A sample size of 224 was required to detect differences of 10 mmHg in average systolic blood pressure. Participants were to be randomized, in the ratio of 2:3:3, into 1 of 3 parallel study arms :(1) usual care, (2) wireless home blood pressure monitoring, and (3) wireless home blood pressure monitoring with financial incentives. The primary outcome was the mean change in systolic blood pressure at month 6. The secondary outcomes were the mean reduction in diastolic blood pressure, cost of financial incentives, time taken for the intervention, adherence to home blood pressure monitoring, effectiveness of the framing of financial incentives in decreasing nonadherence to blood pressure self-monitoring and the adherence to antihypertensive medication at month 6.
Results: This study was approved by SingHealth Centralised Institutional Review Board and registered. Between January 24, 2018 and July 10, 2018, 42 participants (18.75% of the required sample size) were enrolled, and 33 participants completed the month 6 assessment by January 31, 2019.
Conclusions: Due to unforeseen events, the study was stopped prematurely; therefore, no results are available. Depending on the blood pressure information received from the patients, the algorithm can trigger immediate blood pressure advice (eg, Accident and Emergency department visit advice for extremely high blood pressure), weekly feedback on blood pressure monitoring, medication titration, or skipping of routine follow-ups. The inclusion of financial incentives framed as health capital provides a novel idea on how to promote adherence to remote monitoring, and ultimately, improve chronic disease management.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03368417; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03368417.
International registered report identifier (irrid): DERR1-10.2196/27496.
Keywords: behavior change; financial incentive; home blood pressure monitoring; hypertension; medication adherence; remote titration; telemedicine.
©Marcel Bilger, Agnes Ying Leng Koong, Ian Kwong Yun Phoon, Ngiap Chuan Tan, Juliana Bahadin, Joann Bairavi, Ada Portia M Batcagan-Abueg, Eric A Finkelstein. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (https://www.researchprotocols.org), 09.06.2021.