Self-monitoring of blood pressure during pregnancy
The blood pressure management system BPm-Health allows pregnant women to self-monitor blood pressure during pregnancy enabling healthcare professionals to provide remote care for mums-to-be.
The need for safe remote monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic
There has been an increasing recognition of the benefits from self-monitoring of blood pressure (‘BP’) during pregnancy - see references below. The COVID-19 outbreak is now increasing the need for healthcare professionals to advocate BP self-monitoring to reduce face-to-face consultations for pregnant and postnatal women whilst maintaining care for the woman and her baby.
Benefits
Improves care
Provides women with advice about blood pressure levels.
Gives control
Self- monitoring gives pregnant women greater control of their pregnancy care while potentially reducing the need for face-to-face clinic visits
Provides reassurance
Helps mums-to-be self-monitor blood pressure to protect themselves and their baby.
Easy, accurate monitoring
Provides an easy to use and uniform monitoring system for healthcare professionals.
Increases safety
Reduces face-to-face contact to reduce risk associated with COVID-19 infection.
Secure
All patient data is de-identified and anonymised, securely stored on the cloud as a completely isolated instance with rigorous data security and privacy measures.
BPm-Health is classified as a Medical Device and is registered as such with the UK National Competent Authority (MHRA)
Self-monitoring in pregnancy
Either to replace BP measurements on the day of a clinic or so that BP measurements may be done more frequently.
Easy to use
Provides an easy to use system for women, many of whom already informally self-monitor.
Provides advice
Provides advice on what a woman should do depending on her BP levels.
BPm-Health is aimed at:
Women with chronic hypertension, gestational hypertension, pre-eclampsia
Women determined as high or moderate risk by NICE guidelines (see below)
All pregnant women (including those who may need to self-isolate for a period)
NICE Guidelines* identify the following groups at risk of hypertension in pregnancy:
One of the following risk factors:
- hypertensive disease during a previous pregnancy
- chronic kidney disease
- autoimmune disease (e.g. systemic lupus erythematosus orantiphospholipid syndrome)
- type 1 or type 2 diabetes
Two or more of the following risk factors:
- first pregnancy
- age 40 years or older
- pregnancy interval of more than 10 years
- body mass index (BMI) of 35 kg/m2 or more family history of pre-eclampsia
- multi-fetal pregnancy
*NICE guideline [NG133] “Hypertension in pregnancy:diagnosis and management” published June 2019: www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng133
BPm-Health in the news
FAQs
References
Pealing LM, Tucker KL, Mackillop LH, Crawford C, Wilson H, Nickless A, et al. A randomised controlled trial of blood pressure self-monitoring in the management of hypertensive pregnancy. OPTIMUM-BP: A feasibility trial. Pregnancy Hypertens. 2019; 18:141-9.
Cairns AE, Tucker KL, Leeson P, Mackillop LH, Santos M, Velardo C, et al. Self-Management of Postnatal Hypertension: The SNAP-HT Trial. Hypertension. 2018.
Tucker KL, Taylor KS, Crawford C, Hodgkinson JA, Bankhead C, Carver T, et al. Blood pressure self-monitoring in pregnancy: examining feasibility in a prospective cohort study. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2017; 17(1):442.
Hinton L, Tucker KL, Greenfield SM, Hodgkinson JA, Mackillop L, McCourt C, et al.Blood pressure self-monitoring in pregnancy (BuMP) feasibility study; a qualitative analysis of women's experiences of self-monitoring. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2017; 17(1):427.
Hypertension in pregnancy: diagnosis and management NICE guideline [NG133] Published date: 25 June 2019 https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng133
‘Self-monitoring of blood pressure in pregnancy Information for healthcare professionals Version 1’: Published Monday 30 March 2020 Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists - https://www.rcog.org.uk/globalassets/ documents/guidelines/2020-03-30-self-monitoring-of-blood-pressure-in-pregnancy.pdf
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