Blood Pressure Machine Research

HSE 542 - Arizona State University

Sophia Robinson, Gan Lindquist, Shaun Armet

After performing extensive research, we plan to build an easy to use companion app for drug store and at home blood pressure machines that is both educational and records results for users. This app will be compatible on any blood pressure machine. Our research suggests that app like this is wanted by users.

Introduction

Non Hospital based care is a growing market for the healthcare industry, relying on advanced methods of Telehealth capabilities such as virtual visits and remote patient monitoring. Strictly relying on a single test done at home or in a health clinic has been found to not be sensitive enough to lead to any accurate diagnoses (Hodgkinson et al.). Another meta analysis found that patients with hypertension who had their blood pressure taken at home (versus at a healthcare facility) were more likely to reach their blood pressure targets (Cappucio et al.). A study done by Tyto care has found that patients who were monitored at home after being hospitalized has led to a decrease in re-hospitalization (Tyto 2022).

There are many devices that allow patients to be monitored when they are released from the hospital, sending the information back to their physicians. Our aim is to use this technology and make it easier for patients to see their own results and send them to their providers with greater ease. Our plan is to create an app that connects to blood pressure machines that you find at drug stores. There would be a way to tap your phone to get your blood pressure on to your health app which would be automatically uploaded to your provider's network.

In order to understand what users need or want in the blood pressure machine companion app, we set out do collect data from potential users. We first created a survey on Qualtrics that we sent out to potential users. After we collected data from them we did our own research on pain points for the process of taking one's blood pressure at a public location. We did so by performing a heuristic evaluation and a task analysis.

Survey

We collected data from n=16 participants via the online survey platform Qualtrics. The majority of our participants were over the age of 60 (58.33%), and get their blood pressure taken between 1 and 6 times a year (45.45). 50% of respondents reported that they normally get their blood pressure taken at a doctors office or health clinic, and 33% reported taking their blood pressure at home. 63.64% of respondents do not keep any sort of record of their blood pressure, but 71.4% of respondents said they wish they had a record of it. Of the people who do keep a record of their results, 57% keep track using pen and paper. Only 30.8% of respondents use a public blood pressure machine with any sort of regularity (more than a couple of times a year). No one found the public blood pressure machines difficult to use. 61.5% of users said that it would be helpful to have a way to automatically save the data to a device or app. People reported that the biggest reasons for not getting their blood pressure taken regularly are: a lack of access to a machine, not remembering previous readings so the new readings don’t give any insight, and not being able to figure out how to work the machines.

The main points we took away from this survey data is:

People would like to have their blood pressure taken more than they do currently
People wish they had an effective and easy way to track their blood pressure
People would like a way to know how to use in-store or take home machine’s properly

Heuristic Evaluation

We performed a Heuristic Evaluation in order to better understand the pain points that people might experience while using a blood pressure machine.

Main areas of concern:

Error prevention
Recognition rather than recall
Flexibility of use
Help users recover from errors
Help and documentation

The main takeaways from the heuristic evaluation are:

The monitor should provide clear instructions and display measurements and results in a way that’s easily understandable by user.
Simple and clean design to ease and reduce anxiety while using device.
Experienced and new users should find machine easy to use.
Providing text descriptions or symbols to help user use the machine and interpret the results.

Task Analysis

Task analysis was performed for two main types of BP machines, one was extremely simplistic, with only two buttons. The other was very modern and had a touch screen. The main takeaways from the task analysis were:

Neither machine option had area for easy to read instructions

The more simplistic machine only had a way to view the results, no way to print or understand results

For the more modern machine, in order to see results you had to be using the exact same machine every time, no universal compatibility

Findings from Research

Our findings show that there is a demand for an easy way to get one’s blood pressure taken, along with a way to record the blood pressure data and have a way to look at the data trends over time. While users can go and get their blood pressure taken easily at the drug store or at home, oftentimes they do not have a way to understand the results or a way to remember them. Creating an app to store this data would solve this issue for uses. Adding a feature showing users how to properly use the device would also help users needs, as we found from our survey.

Research

Prototype Design

Using the data that we gathered, we put together a design for the companion app. We aimed to make it easy to use, with only the features needed, in an effort to make it user friendly.

Link to final prototype

Discussion

The main features that we wanted to highlight in our prototypes are:

Quick to access the app via QR code
Instructions/infographic easy to find on main page
Data visualization for users
Ability to link with health care providers.

We hope that through our easy to use app, people would be able to take their blood pressure more often and receive more accurate results than they currently do. We also believe that our data visualization tools will allow users to understand their results better and therefore be able to take action on their health.

Conclusion

Our goal was to make an app that acts as an added tool for public or at home blood pressure machines that would improve accessibility for users, allowing them to get more accurate results and be able to understand their results better. We also wanted to create an app that increases accessibility by having options for larger text or voice control and increases understanding of results by having charts of data with brief explanations telling users what each chart means.

Our app design, with large text options and voice control, will allow users of different abilities to use it with ease. The tutorial on how to properly take one's blood pressure will allow more people to be health conscious in an accurate way.

While our app will be a helpful too for many, there are still limitations to it. We will do our best to keep the data that people input secure, but there could be a data breach. Also, while public and at home blood pressure machines are generally cost effective methods, some people may still have barriers reaching them due to location or cost.

Future Directions

Our next step for this application would be to perform user testing on our design. We will do a full evaluation on the app in order to assess how user friendly it is. Since one of our main goals is to make sure that the application is easy to use for everyone.