Conclusions
hypertension, chronic disease
HYPERTENSION, CHRONIC DISEASE
This study reports that the mHealth app–based intervention for patient self-management of hypertension may be able to improve their health knowledge and enable them to improve self-management toward a healthy lifestyle, including adherence to medication, a low-salt diet, and physical activities, thereby achieving optimal BP control at 6 months after the intervention. The mHealth innovation addresses the gaps for health providers and organizations to support patients with chronic disease self-management by providing better access to educational material, ongoing monitoring, and feedback. Further research is needed to control for potential confounding factors to ascertain the specific effects of these interventions more accurately.This project was supported by the 2016 Ningxia Science and Technology Support Project (2016KJHM62); the 2017 Key Research and Development Plan of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (2017BY038); and the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai, China (21ZR1412700). The authors would like to thank Jing Wang, Yan Chen, and Haoce Huang for their assistance in data collection and analysis.Conflicts of Interest: None declared.
This randomized study was only retrospectively registered, explained by the authors’ lack of awareness about the requirements for prospective registration prior to the commencement of the study and the realization of its necessity only during the course of the research. The editor granted an exception from ICMJE rules mandating prospective registration of randomized trials, because the risk of bias appears low and the study was considered formative, guiding the development of the application or its potential to significantly improve patient engagement in their self-management of hypertension, as argued by the authors. However, readers are advised to carefully assess the validity of any potential explicit or implicit claims related to primary outcomes or effectiveness, as retrospective registration does not prevent authors from changing their outcome measures retrospectivelyThe medication use between the 2 groups.Self-assessment of hypertension knowledge.Self-assessment of lifestyle behaviors.CONSORT-EHEALTH checklist.