Digital Hypertension Management Solutions

Hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, is one of the most common chronic conditions in the United States, affecting an estimated 120 million adults and growing. It is also a contributing risk factor for potentially fatal diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, and chronic kidney disease. Hypertension affects all demographic groups, with a higher prevalence among Black people, men, and older adults.  

Digital hypertension solutions aim to improve patients’ self-management and expand access to timely, effective treatment. These solutions are centered around a connected blood pressure cuff that delivers frequent and reliable home readings.  

These solutions use three broad approaches: 

• Blood Pressure Monitoring— Extend existing hypertension care beyond the clinical office by supporting patients’ home monitoring and delivering data back to the healthcare provider.  

• Medication Management— Employ dedicated, virtual care teams to coordinate patients’ medication adjustments as a supplement to the patient’s main primary care team.  

• Behavior Change solutions— Deliver educational content, alerts, reminders, and virtual interactions with coaches (digital or human) or care teams to improve patient’s self-management of their hypertension. 

Report contributors and reviewers provided important expertise and insight throughout our process. Those who directly contributed to the report have no relevant conflicts of interest to disclose.​

PHTI’s independent evaluation found that digital hypertension solutions focused on medication management deliver rapid and clinically meaningful improvements in blood pressure that outperform usual care. Other digital approaches to hypertension management are less effective and do not provide clinically meaningful improvements, including solutions that transmit home monitoring data to providers, and solutions that focus on patient behavior change.

In terms of healthcare costs, all digital hypertension solutions increase spending in the short-term compared to usual care. However, solutions that focus on medication management are expected to produce long-term net savings from improved cardiovascular health that reduces the risk of stroke, heart attack, and death. These long-term clinical benefits have the potential, over a decade, to offset up front spending in the initial, three-year window.

The report supports broader adoption of digital hypertension solutions that focus on medication management by combining connected blood pressure cuffs with virtual care teams that help manage prescribing and dosing.

• Study the effects of combining blood pressure monitoring, goal-driven medication management, and behavior change for improved clinical outcomes and to close access and equity gaps for underserved patient populations.  

• Increasingly integrate digital medication management into usual care and into other digital hypertension management solution types. 

• Study the long-term impact of digital hypertension management solutions on clinical outcomes and healthcare utilization.  

• Encourage greater investment in hypertension management by building short- and long-term budgets in the context of relevant quality improvement programs, such as Medicare Advantage Star Ratings or value-based payment arrangements.