Hypertension Prevention in a Human Settlement of the Peruvian Capital Using Information and Communications Technology

摘要

Hypertension (HT) or high blood pressure is one of the risk factors that most likely develops cardiovascular diseases. These diseases left unchecked are the number ones that cause the most deaths globally. In the capital city of Peru there are many human settlements where people live with low economic resources and also do not have easy access to health centers. We carried out a study to test for HT among the population of a human settlement called Las Lomas de Ventanilla. Due to the lack of health centers close to this human settlement we took advantage of ICT tools with no cost to deliver high blood pressure measurements to a health care provider not on-site. A total of 68 people were evaluated among men and women. The blood pressure measurements of each participant were transmitted by SMS to the health care provider. A mobile application of the Wondershare-MobileGo software was installed in the smartphone of the health care provider where he could observe in real-time the blood pressure measurements. The tests ran daily during a whole week. All the measurements were stored within the software in an Excel table. The health care provider could determine at the end of the study that 22% of the patients had high blood pressure and needed immediate attention. Considering our results, we suggest that health authorities and the ministry of health from Peru should look at these ICT tools, like the Wondershare-MobileGo software, in order to reach those people with low economic means and living in remote areas and which are more likely to suffer from a variety of diseases, being HT one of them.