Readiness Assessment of Patients With Arterial Hypertension to the Application of Telemedical Technologies

This article presents original data on patients' awareness of arterial hypertension and their readiness to use telemedicine technologies. The aim: to study the factors that may affect the effectiveness of diagnosis and treatment of patients with arterial hypertension (AH) through the use of telemedicine technologies. Materials and methods: this study involves 336 outpatients and indoor patients diagnosed with arterial hypertension. Anonymously, using a questionnaire, were assessed patients' awareness of their diagnosis, access to the Internet, and the ability to remotely control of blood pressure. Results: only about a third of all respondents systematically took the recommended antihypertensive therapy daily. Among them, the vast majority were indoor patients (82 %). We found a direct dependence between the regularity to use the antihypertensive therapy and the interest in the use of telemonitoring of blood pressure (Spearman correlation coefficient +0.59). There is a low awareness of patients about the possibilities of remote monitoring of blood pressure (only 11 %), the vast majority of patients (60 %) for the first time learned about such technologies. Among our respondents, a statistically significant dependence was found between the age of patients and interest in telemonitoring blood pressure at a significance level of p<0.01 (χ2 – 26.119, and the critical value of χ2 significance level p=0.01 is 9.21). Conclusions: the main sources of information for patients with arterial hypertension are primary care physicians (family doctors, therapists) and the Internet. Limited access of patients to the Internet can negatively affect over introduction of telemedicine technologies for the management of arterial hypertension, despite the great interest of patients and society.