One of the uses that we envisioned when we set out to make the Smart Blood Pressure Monitor was that people would use it to send their readings to their physician. We built features into the Withings app to help them do that, most notably with the option to send the measurements via e-mail.
On May 9th, the Georges Pompidou European Hospital of Paris released the results of an experiment that supports these views. Knowing that blood pressure measurements made at home are often more accurate than those made in a hospital or a doctor’s office (where the surroundings tend to cause additional stress for the patient), the hospital tested the telemedicine solution offered by our Blood Pressure Monitor.
The Hypertension department of the hospitals loaned a Withings Blood Pressure Monitor to volunteer patients who owned an iPhone and asked them to use it to measure their blood pressure at home and send the results by e-mail. Patients were also asked to evaluate three elements separately: the device itself, the app and specifically in the app the process to send measures by e-mail.
The Blood Pressure Monitor received an average score of 9 out of 10 on all three criteria. The most limiting factor for the study was that only 4% of the department’s patients owned an iPhone and were able to take part in the experiment. The few complaints actually came mostly from the other end of the chain, with doctors reporting that they received too many individual readings from some patients when what they are really interested in when it comes to monitoring blood pressure is seeing trends and averages over a period of time.
This experiment was of rather small scale and did not result in a formal scientific publication but it is nonetheless very encouraging for us. Dr Postel-Vinay of the Hypertension department at Georges Pompidou wrote this article, available only in French, to describe it.
What about you? Do you share the readings from the Withings blood pressure monitor with your physician? If so, how do you do it?
