Following its commitment to inspire Nigerians to care for their health, Omron Healthcare EMEA in partnership with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), has provided patients with hypertension care in pharmacies close to their homes, to help reduce cost, travel time and time waiting for appointments with doctors.
This Pilot Project, Omron Medical Connect, is a service that enables patients to receive remote consultation and prescriptions for hypertension from cardiologists at LUTH directly at their community pharmacy. And it kicked off from February Saturday 6 to October this year in five areas in Lagos and surrounding areas.
The selected outlets include: Silverline Pharmacy in Aguda, Victory Drugs in Festac Town, Elbeth Pharmacy in Isasi, Pillbox Pharmacy in Onike Iyawa and Mebic in Ifako Gbagada. Omron dislcosed that it would recruit500 patients to the Omron Medical Connect Pilot to demonstrate feasibility and effectiveness of this innovative healthcare delivery model.
Speaking to newsmen at a conference in Lagos, the Group Manager for Omron Healthcare EMEA, Paul Stevens, explained that managing chronic illnesses such as hypertension effectively would be a critical challenge for Nigeria’s Healthcare system in the coming decades.
"By reducing the burden of chronic disease management on hospitals - while providing a platform for patients to receive high quality care at low cost - we believe that this project can transform the way people receive healthcare, and eventually increase affordability and accessibility for millions of patients," he added.
According to medical experts, high blood pressure is the number one risk factor for Cardiovascular Disease(CVD) and associated deaths in Sub Saharan Africa. Blood pressure lowering significantly reduces CVD risk but often requires lifelong treatment. Now, since anti-hypertensive treatment coverage in Sub Saharan Africa is very low, mainly due to low awareness of hypertension and poor access to quality care. Even in settings where hypertension care is available, Stevens decried that accessibility for patients is often poor because of high costs of care, high travel costs or long waiting times at the clinics leading to loss of income and low patient satisfaction.
He emphasised: "Omron Medical Connect will leverage community pharmacies as the patient’s main point of care where blood pressure will be measured. The patient will be counselled on lifestyle measures and drug use, and drugs will be dispensed."
Meanwhile, the Country Manager, Nigeria and Ghana Omron Healthcare EMEA - Olugbenga Abiodun -assured that Blood pressure would be monitored by a doctor via digital data transfer through a 'health cloud'.
"Doctors are then able to electronically renew prescriptions based on the BP measurements performed at the pharmacy. Doctors from LUTH will provide the remote monitoring service and this hospital will serve as the referral site for patients with an indication for usual physician-based care."
Pharmacy-based care can have a significant positive impact on communities and families. Good blood pressure control leads to longer, healthier lives. Hence, Omron will sponsor 10 community BP screening events, targeting 5000 people as efforts to raise awareness on the issue of hypertension and to identify patients suitable for pharmacy-based hypertension care via Omron Medical Connect.
"In order to confirm the benefits of Omron Medical Connect, an independent clinical observation study will measure the outcomes of the pilot, measuring patient retention in the Pilot, the impact on medication adherence and patient blood pressure, plus the cost of care to the patients and healthcare providers."
The organisation says it is working towards a world with zero occurrences of heart attacks, strokes or other cardiovascular related events - ‘Towards Zero Events’. Abiodun added that Omron is partnering healthcare providers to enable it support patients in gaining more insight into their health, receive advice and guidance and increase years of healthy life lived for people around the globe.
By: Rebecca Ejifoma
This Day Live News
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