Feasibility of Using Blood Pressure Self-Monitoring and the Epic MyChart Blood Pressure Flowsheet to Monitor Blood Pressure After Preeclampsia

Abstract

Preeclampsia is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Women who experienced preeclampsia require close blood pressure surveillance postpartum. Remote monitoring of blood pressure using a mobile health application may be a viable method of surveillance in this population. The purpose of this project was to assess the feasibility of using the MyWellSpan mobile application to engage postpartum women who experienced preeclampsia in blood pressure self-monitoring. Women who chose to participate were provided an automatic blood pressure cuff and educational materials and were enrolled in MyWellSpan. A survey created by the authors asked participants to rate by Likert scale their satisfaction with the program and ease of use of the blood pressure cuff and self-monitoring. The electronic health record was reviewed retrospectively to assess utilization of the MyWellSpan mobile application to document blood pressure. The majority of women who participated reported that operating the blood pressure cuff was very easy and felt that it would be very easy to monitor their blood pressure twice daily. Sixty-nine percent of those women in the program electronically submitted at least 1 blood pressure measurement, thus confirming the feasibility of self-monitoring and reporting using a mobile application.

Postpartum Home Blood Pressure Monitoring

“…Searches for the full review yielded 16,105 records, of which 380 were retrieved and screened in full text. Thirteen studies (in 18 articles [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] ) pertained to home BP monitoring: three RCTs, two nonrandomized comparative studies, and eight single-arm studies (see Fig. 1 for the literature flow diagram and Appendix 2, available online at http://links.lww.com/AOG/ D229, for design details).…”

“…The studies were published between 2017 and 2022 and included 3,867 participants. [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] Eleven studies were conducted in the United States, one was conducted in the United Kingdom, and one was conducted in India. The three RCTs had a total of 510 participants, the two nonrandomized comparative studies had 901 participants, and the eight single-arm studies had 2,456 participants.…”

“…Eight studies offered home BP monitoring to all individuals who met specific inclusion criteria (Table 2). 23,[27][28][29]35,36,38,40 Four of the studies described themselves as feasibility studies that assessed the practicality of home BP monitoring in a small group of participants (See Appendix 3, available online at http://links.lww.com/AOG/D229, for a detailed summary of these studies). 23,27,35,38 Among those who chose to participate in feasibility studies of home BP monitoring, 83.3-87.0% reported that they were satisfied with their postpartum care.…”