Stroke patients and their attitudes toward mHealth monitoring to support blood pressure control and medication adherence.

Background: Mobile health, or mHealth, has increasingly been signaled as an effective means to expedite communication and improve medical regimen adherence, especially for patients with chronic health conditions such as stroke. However, there is a lack of data on attitudes of stroke patients toward mHealth. Such information will aid in identifying key indicators for feasibility and optimal implementation of mHealth to prevent and/or decrease rates of secondary stroke. Our objective was to ascertain stroke patients' attitudes toward using mobile phone enabled blood pressure (BP) monitoring and medication adherence and identify factors that modulate these attitudes.

Methods: Sixty stroke patients received a brief demonstration of mHealth devices to assist with BP control and medication adherence and a survey to evaluate willingness to use this technology.

Results: The 60 participants had a mean age of 57 years, were 43.3% male, and 53.3% were White. With respect to telecommunication prevalence, 93.3% owned a cellular device and 25% owned a smartphone. About 70% owned a working computer. Regarding attitudes, 85% felt comfortable with a doctor or nurse using mHealth technologies to monitor personal health information, 78.3% believed mHealth would help remind them to follow doctor's directions, and 83.3% were confident that technology could effectively be used to communicate with health care providers for medical needs.

Conclusions: Mobile device use is high in stroke patients and they are amenable to mHealth for communication and assistance in adhering to their medical regimens. More research is needed to explore usefulness of this technology in larger stroke populations.