mHealth to Enable Task Sharing for Hypertension Care in LMIC

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Although hypertension diagnosis is relatively simple and there are cheap and effective medications for lowering blood pressure, less than 40% of patients with hypertension in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) are aware of their diagnosis and less than 10% have good control of their blood pressure. Community health workers (CHWs) and mobile health (mHealth) technology are increasingly being used in LMIC to fill gaps in hypertension care, but current approaches are too dependent on physician direction. The long-term goal is to increase the number of patients living with hypertension in LMIC who are diagnosed and effectively treated through task sharing with CHWs equipped with mHealth technology. The overall objectives in this application are to 1) develop a mobile application to provide advanced clinical decision support (CDS) for CHWs in Guatemala, a middle-income country; 2) determine the accuracy of CHWs using this application in diagnosing hypertension; and 3) determine the effectiveness of these CHWs thus-equipped in managing hypertension compared to care provided by a physician. The central hypothesis is that CHWs using an mHealth application and remotely supervised can diagnose and manage hypertension with similar accuracy, efficacy, and safety to a physician. The rationale for this project is that demonstration of the efficacy of CHWs using mobile health technology for independent hypertension diagnosis and management would have broad implications for health service delivery in LMIC and the application and care model developed for this proposal could be easily adapted to other settings. The central hypothesis will be tested by pursuing three specific aims: 1) Test the accuracy of CHWs equipped with a mobile application to diagnose hypertension; 2) Assess the feasibility of CHW-led hypertension management enabled by a mobile application; and 3) Determine the efficacy of CHW-led hypertension management aided by a mobile application compared to physician care. Under the first aim, CHWs using the application developed for this proposal will screen patients for hypertension and their diagnostic accuracy compared with that of a physician. For the second aim, CHWs using the application will manage a small group of patients with hypertension to assess intervention feasibility and continue iterative application development. For aim three, a randomized, controlled, non-inferiority trial will be conducted to compare the safety and efficacy of hypertension management by CHWs equipped with the mobile application to physician care. The proposed research is innovative because it represents a substantive departure from the status quo by enabling CHWs to independently identify and treat hypertension with asynchronous physician supervision using a sophisticated mHealth CDS application providing guidance on titration of multiple medications and validated through a rigorous experimental design. This project is significant because it is expected to result in a model of care that would be widely adaptable to low-resource settings around the world, leading to increased diagnosis and treatment of hypertension and reduced cardiovascular disease and death.