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TensioBot: a Chatbot Assistant for Self-Managed in-House Blood Pressure Checking

  • Mobile & Wireless Health
  • Published:
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Abstract

Hypertension is a chronic condition that can lead to serious health problems. Patients with High Blood Pressure (HBP) are often asked to have their BP checked at home. The traditional at-home procedure has some drawbacks, such as forgetting to check or write down the values, errors in transcribing the numbers, or the impossibility of immediately notifying medical staff of out-of-range BP values. To facilitate self-measurements by patients at home we devised TensioBot, a Telegram based chatbot. The bot sends patients reminders to check their BP, advice on good monitoring practices, measurement tracking, medical alerts and allows healthcare professionals to access up-to-date measurement information. TensioBot has been tested for two years in a randomized controlled trial with 112 patients (55 using the bot and 57 in the control group). We found that, although the bot group showed similar results in terms of adherence to the BP checking schedule, bot users scored better in terms of knowledge and skills on BP checking best practices. Participants rated the bot very positively, perceived it as useful and easy to use, and continued to use it after the intervention. Moreover, all data being equal, we describe some other benefits of using a chatbot for self-managed in-house BP control, both for patients and healthcare professionals and systems.

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Data availability

xls spreadsheet (raw data) and statistical analysis (R scripts) are available at https://github.com/juananpe/tensiobot-analysis/

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Ruiz de Alegria and Dr. Yuste, from the School of Nursing of Vitoria-Gasteiz, for their support in the design of the project. We thank Dr. Alcalde head of the Nephrology Department of the Araba University Hospital, for his collaboration. We thank nurses Mrs. Merchan Mendo and Mrs. Gallego Robles for their collaboration in the data collection.

Code availability

The source code of TensioBot is published here under a GPLv3 open source license https://github.com/juananpe/TensioBot

Author information

Author notes

  1. Leyre Echeazarra and Juanan Pereira contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physiology Department, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Paseo de la Universidad, 7, 01006, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

    Leyre Echeazarra

  2. BioAraba Health Research Institute, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

    Leyre Echeazarra & Ramón Saracho

  3. LSI Department, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Manuel Lardizabal Ibilbidea, 1, 20018, Donostia, Spain

    Juanan Pereira

  4. Basque Health Service (Osakidetza), Araba Universitary Hospital, Nephrology Service Calle Leandro de Viana 1, 01008, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

    Ramón Saracho

Authors
  1. Leyre Echeazarra
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  2. Juanan Pereira
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  3. Ramón Saracho
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. The principal investigator of the project is LE. Project design and data collection were performed by LE and RS. Software design was performed by JR. Data analysis was performed by RS and JP. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Leyre Echeazarra.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

The clinical trial “Utilidad de una aplicación en dispositivo móvil (@TensioBot) para la automedida de la presión arterial” received authorization from the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of the BioAraba Health Research Institute, with approval number/ID 2017–031 and PI LE.

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The participants have consented to the submission of this study to the journal.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Highlights

• A chatbot for Telegram was developed to help patients with hypertension to self-monitor their blood pressure,

• The bot improved knowledge on good practices related to blood pressure self-monitoring procedures in intervention patients (p=0.037).

• A majority of the patients, 85%, kept using the bot even after the experiment was over,

• Using a chatbot for self-managed blood pressure checking brings tracking and monitoring advantages for patients and doctors.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Mobile & Wireless Health.

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Echeazarra, L., Pereira, J. & Saracho, R. TensioBot: a Chatbot Assistant for Self-Managed in-House Blood Pressure Checking. J Med Syst 45, 54 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-021-01730-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-021-01730-x

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