The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute awarded the HealthPartners Institute, a division of Bloomington, Minn.-based HealthPartners, $6 million to continue its hypertension research.
During the first phase of the HealthPartners Institute's hypertension study, called Hyperlink, researchers found home telemonitoring services improved blood pressure control for patients with hypertension. For the second phase, the researchers intend to expand the study to a larger number of patients, who will share home telemonitoring data with pharmacists and nurse practitioners.
HealthPartners Institute selected AMC Health, a virtual care solutions provider, to supply telemonitoring technology for the study. AMC Health will provide patients with in-home devices to measure blood pressure, which will deliver vitals data through an AMC Health clinical platform to HealthPartners' Epic EMR.
"Our study will show whether telehealth improves hypertension care for patients who are enrolled directly from a real-world primary care setting," said Karen Margolis, MD, associate medical director for care improvement research at HealthPartners Institute. "We will be able to get more accurate readings by having patients take their readings several days each week."