In Scotland blood pressure (BP) monitoring accounts for 1.2 million primary care appointments annually. Reducing high BP decreases cardiovascular disease. However, BP checked by patients at home is more accurate than when checked by doctors or nurses in the surgery. The Scale Up BP and successor Florence services aimed to improve the quality of BP monitoring and management by allowing patients to measure their own BP at home and electronically report it to their practice. In the current covid19 emergency it could support remote management of BP.
In the pilot phase people found Scale Up BP helped them manage their BP more effectively, this was then followed up by a larger programme - Florence. This should lead to reduced rates of cardiovascular disease, but this is difficult to measure without a matched comparison group. This project therefore aims to use anonymised data to compare rates of hospital admission for cardiovascular disease for Scale Up BP/Florence users with multiple matched patients from GP practices which do not offer this service yet. It will also compare patterns of service use before and during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Similarly two other studies will investigate the use and impact of cardiovascular rehabilitation services and medicines optimisation on outcomes for people at risk of stroke and heart attack.
