Session SB2.1

PAOLINA (PAziente on LINe, Ambulatoriale) as a Web Application for Facilitating the Storage and the Management of Self-Measured Blood Pressure Data

G Djukic*, L Mezzasalma, L Serasini, S Ghione

Institute of Clinical Physiology
Pisa, Italy

Introduction: Self-measurement of blood pressure at home (a.k.a. home blood pressure = HBP) is accepted by the international medical guidelines as an effective procedure for the management of arterial hypertension and is increasingly popular among hypertensive patients. This, however, transfers on the patients’ side the responsibility of data acquisition, storage and management. PAOLINA represents a Web application that allows the patients at home, to input, store and consult their own home pressure measurements. At the same time, it permits the consultation of the data by authorized health providers. The system favours a more correct use of acquired information and provides guidelines for the proper method of long-term HBP monitoring. The system is a pilot study with the aim of achieving greater and more proper involvement of the patient at the same time making easier and more efficient his interaction with the health facility, by moving whenever possible, the information rather than the patient.
Methods: PAOLINA is a php5 web application based upon Zend Framework. We make use of the industry standard web application design pattern MVC, which allows our developers and web designers to separate their concerns and skills, making code implementation and design easily and clearly separated. We have built our application model using standard database programming best practices and mySQL database engine. PAOLINA is I18N and L10N ready allowing its future use around the world.
Results and Discussion: PAOLINA is hosted on an Apple’s minimac dressing an 2 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2 GB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM running Apache 2.2.6 Web server. The current features set includes, among other, methods for authentication and authorization of PAOLINA’s users, validation and registration of HBP, presentation of acquired data in tabular and graphical format. Several users at present benefit from using PAOLINA and are providing us with helpful feedback for a better and more feature-rich application. The application of this approach for other easily collectible clinically relevant information is envisaged.

(Abstract Control Number: 338)