One very important aspect of maintaining your blood pressure is to self-monitor. Even individuals that feel they are in peak physical health can benefit from self-monitoring, as many health issues often go undiagnosed due to not having any observable symptoms. It is actually quite common to experience a health condition without even knowing you have it, including suffering from hypertension. Proper self-monitoring protocols can not only help you identify a particular health concern, but properly manage it as well to allow you to shift medications, bring up issues with your care provider, and possibly prevent other serious conditions from developing.

Why is Monitoring Your Blood Pressure Health so Important?

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is also known as a silent killer. This is because the symptoms can often go undetected for quite sometime. Home blood pressure monitoring allows a healthcare team to assess a patient’s blood pressure readings over a longer period of time, rather than periodically taking measurements in an office setting. This provides more reliable blood pressure readings to help your healthcare team make informed decisions regarding your care. High blood pressure contributes to many major health conditions, including heart failure, stroke, and heart attack. Evidence has shown that self-measured blood pressure monitoring, coupled with healthcare intervention, has been proven to help people lower their blood pressure.

The Negatives of Notebooks for Self-Monitoring

When healthcare professionals suggest the use of self-monitoring procedures for their patients, many minds may immediately jump to utilizing a notebook. But, reaching for your pen and paper may actually do more harm than good to your blood pressure health journey.

Mistakes Happen

Human error plays a large role in blood pressure self-monitoring issues that arise when patients use a notebook. This is because the patient must remain extremely organized and precise when they jot down their data. Patients will need to ensure that they are keeping track of not only the day that they are taking their blood pressure measurements on, but also the time. Mixing these up at any point in time could relay inaccurate information to your healthcare team, leading to confusion once you get into the office for measurements. This could lead to prolonged treatment or a missed diagnosis. Patients will also need to make sure that they are correctly labeling and marking their actual measurement data, especially if they need to keep track of more than one person.

Trends are Difficult to Spot

Self-monitoring allows us to view data and make informed decisions. However, writing down data in a notebook does not allow us to easily spot trends. Information is presented at face-value and data trends can often fly under the radar, especially for the medically untrained eye. This means that delays in treatment may occur, as you may not notice when it would be necessary to schedule your next appointment.

Easy to Lose

While jotting down your blood pressure measurements in a notebook can seem like a great idea, once you misplace that notebook you will lose all the measurements you had previously taken. Since you will be carrying this notebook around with you everywhere you go, it would be easy to set it somewhere and accidentally forget about it. Then, you would have to either try to remember your measurements, which can lead to inaccuracies, or start all over.

Hard to Remember

Every time a measurement is taken, you will need to make sure that you also write down the measurement into your notebook.It will also need to be written down under the correct time and date as well. It can be difficult alone just to remember to take a measurement, let alone having to also write it down into a notebook. Accidentally forgetting to write down some measurements can leave you and your healthcare team confused on your blood pressure measurements that you did remember to write down.

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SmartBP for Self-Monitoring

SmartBP offers users an innovative way to self-monitor their blood pressure, all from their Apple or Android phone. Replace your notebook with a simpler, and more effective, way to monitor your blood pressure.

Easily view data trends

‍Trends in your blood pressure measurements are easy to spot and organize, due to the various graphs and metrics that will be provided to you. Adding tags to your own personal record can allow you to monitor progress that you have made. Spikes or concerning numbers regarding your blood pressure will be more noticeable, allowing you to better understand what causes high blood pressure for you. Ease of analysis makes relaying this information to your healthcare team more effective.

Get summarized reports

‍Quickly and easily view your information from each measurement in generated summary reports. These reports are tagged and organized to present all your necessary information in an easy-to-read format. PDF reports can also be generated to provide you with a means of sharing this information with a healthcare provider.

Set reminders and stay organized

‍SmartBP allows you to set ongoing daily, weekly, or monthly reminders for various aspects of your blood pressure management. This includes reminders to take your measurements and medicine. You are also able to create multiple user profiles, allowing you to stay organized in the process.

Sync with Apple Health and Google Fit

‍Easily sync your blood pressure data with your favorite health apps, including GoogleFit and Apple Health.

Backup and Access Data on multiple devices

Your records can be exported as a CSV file into iTunes, Dropbox or Google Drive or save it on your local device or computer. In addition, SmartBP offers SmartBP Cloud sync where you can backup your records, incase you lose your phone or get a new one; and access them on multiple devices including your iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

Track Multiple Users on a single app

SmartBP makes it convenient to log your family and loved ones blood pressure from a single application. We also allow family sharing.

Connect with Apple Watch

Stay on top of your measurements without the need to open your phone. Easily log your measurements on your Apple Watch and see snapshots of your progress. Note that SmartBP Apple Watch App does not measure blood pressure.

SmartBP: An All-in-One Blood Pressure Monitoring App

SmartBP is a blood pressure measurement tracker that allows you to access a means of recording and monitoring your blood pressure measurements, conveniently from your smartphone. You are able to record, track, and view data trends to help you make informed decisions regarding your health or relay that information to your healthcare team. Keeping a notebook organized will be a thing of the past! No longer worry about having to carry around your notebook or fear misplacing it, as you will now always have a tool that will contain everything you need to manage your blood pressure. SmartBP is available for users to download for free.