Characteristics and requirements of hypertensive patients willing to use digital health tools in the Chinese community:
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Characteristics and requirements of hypertensive patients willing to use digital health tools in the Chinese community: a multicentre cross-sectional survey Shiqun Chen1, Guoli Sun1, Xiaolin Cen1,2, Jin Liu1, Jianfeng Ye3, Jiyan Chen1, Li Lei1, Yibo He1, Feier Song1, Wei Guo1, Yan Liang4, Yuying Hu5, Kaihong Chen6, Liling Chen6, Ning Tan1 and Yong Liu1*
Abstract Background: Digital health tools (WeChat or mobile health apps) provide opportunities for new methods of hypertension management for hypertensive patients. However, the willingness of these patients to use social media and mobile health apps for hypertension management remains unclear. This study explored the characteristics and requirements of patients willing to use digital health (WDH) tools to manage hypertension. Methods: From February to March 2018, we administered questionnaires to 1089 patients with hypertension at eight Chinese primary medical units. We assessed independent risk factors of WDH and requirement among WDH patients. Results: Overall, 43% (465/1089) of participants were WDH patients, who were younger (58 ± 12 vs 61 ± 13 years) and had a greater proportion of employed individuals (31% vs 14%) and higher education levels (65% vs 52%) than the non-WDH patients (all P < 0.0001). After adjusting for other risk factors, higher education (OR: 0.52; 95% CI: 0.34– 0.79), good medicine adherence (OR: 1.5; 95% CI: 1.0–2.3) and blood pressure self-monitoring (OR: 1.6; 95% CI: 1.2– 2.3) remained significantly associated with WDH (all P < 0.05). WDH patients responded that digital health tools should try to provide a platform for blood pressure monitoring (42%), medication reminders (41%), hypertension knowledge (39%) and doctor-patient communication (32%). Conclusion: Our survey suggested that among hypertensive patients, willingness to use digital health tools was significantly associated with education, medicine adherence and blood pressure self-monitoring. Digital health tool developers and researchers should pay particular attention to recruiting older, less educated and unemployed patients with less willingness and who are less technologically savvy and research the requirements of WDH patients (blood pressure monitoring, medication reminders, and knowledge education) in the future. Keywords: Digital health tools, Hypertension, Willingness, Community, Blood pressure management
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Cardiology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Coronary Heart Disease Prevention, Guangdong Cardiovascular Institute, Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Guangzhou 510000, Guangdong, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and
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