VIRTUAL MANAGEMENT OF HYPERTENSION: ISH POSITION PAPER

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented shift from in-person care to delivering health care remotely. To limit the infectious spread, patients and providers rapidly adopted distant evaluation with online or telephone-based diagnosis and management of hypertension. However, many patients and care providers were unprepared for this rapid shift and may not be delivering optimal hypertension assessment and management. Given that it is likely that virtual care of chronic diseases including hypertension will continue into the future, the International Society of Hypertension developed a position paper to provide practical guidance on the virtual management of hypertension to improve its diagnosis and blood pressure control. This position paper is based on the currently available evidence, hypertension guidelines, and international expert opinion. Virtual care is defined as the delivery of healthcare remotely between patients, their carers, and healthcare providers. As different regions and patients have varying degrees of virtual care resources, skills, and preferences, we conceptualize the basic, advanced and complete virtual care models representing advancing degrees of virtual care. This presentation will review the position statements in these three levels of virtual care and discuss the position statements and rationale for selecting blood pressure monitoring devices, cuffless devices, accurate home blood pressure assessments, optimizing patient education, health behavior change, medication adjustment, and long-term monitoring in a virtual care environment.