Omron – Pilot Evaluation
Joint development, implemention and evaluation of an innovative pharmacy-based hypertension care delivery model for sub-Saharan Africa
Objective
This study aims to evaluate the feasibility of providing hypertension care through community-based pharmacies, including e-monitoring of patients in an urban setting in Nigeria.
Description
OMRON Healthcare Europe approached AIGHD to collaborate on developing, implementing and evaluating an innovative pharmacy-based hypertension care delivery model for sub-Saharan Africa. In this jointly-developed program, patients with hypertension use community pharmacies as their main point of care, rather than regular health facilities. Patients go to the pharmacy for blood pressure measurements, lifestyle advice and drug dispensary. Monitoring of patients and drug prescriptions will be done remotely by a doctor via a digital data transfer tool, a ‘health cloud’. The expected benefits for patients include reduced travel and waiting time at health facilities, reduced costs of care and potentially better service due to lower workloads of pharmacy staff compared to doctors at health facilities. A pilot of the program was started in Lagos, Nigeria, recruiting 336 adults with uncomplicated hypertension to participate in the program for six months.
Outcome
The pilot was successful in lowering blood pressure in hypertensive patients. The doctor’s review at enrollment and increased attention by the pharmacy likely contributed to blood pressure reductions. Patients were satisfied with this type of care. The level of involvement of the pharmacies was a key factor for success. The user-friendliness of the e-monitoring app and consistency of data-capture were identified as areas for improvement. The lessons learned from this study can be used for improvement of pharmacy-based hypertension care, as a way of combatting the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases in low-and middle-income settings.Partners
OMRON Healthcare Europe (Hoofddorp, Netherlands)
Centre for Epidemiology and Health Development (Lagos, Nigera)
PharmAccess Foundation (Lagos, Nigeria)
Funders
OMRON Healthcare Europe
Countries
Nigeria