In the era of decreasing resources for medical care it is likely that the quality of care, especially to the poor inner-city population, may suffer considerably. However, in appropriate instances using sophisticated computerized technology, we may be able to reduce the cost of care while improving quality of care. The purpose of this proposal is to determine the feasibility of long-term monitoring of poorly controlled hypertension in the inner-city African American population using a simple-to-operate transtelephonic physiologic monitoring system. We hypothesize that close monitoring of blood pressure and body weight in a routine daily basis will allow the care giver to reinforce therapy, improve drug compliance, assess efficacy of treatment, and provide patient education with regard to dietary and other deleterious habits. The goals of this investigation are to: (1) determine patients' ability to independently operate the home monitoring system; (2) determine patient compliance with a predefined monitoring schedule; (3) determine initial efficacy; (4) measure the cost to operate and maintain a service center which will be devoted to the monitoring and treatment of under-served patient population; and (5) determine the validity of Home Health Monitor data as compared with standard hospital instrumentation at the patient home.
Thesaurus Terms:African American, biomedical equipment development, computer assisted patient care, computer system design /evaluation, home health care, hypertension, patient monitoring device, telemedicine clinical research, health services research tag, human subjectNational Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
