Digital Hypertension 2023: Concept, hypothesis, and new technology.

We will launch the special issue “Digital Hypertension 2023” in collaboration with “Digital Health”, a new journal from Springer Nature. Recent remarkable developments in information and communication technology (ICT) have greatly changed the approach to hypertension management. Worldwide guidelines recommend hypertension treatment based on 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) and home blood pressure measurements rather than blood pressure conventionally measured in a clinical setting, and a new system of medical care incorporating digital information processing technology is being created by linking wearable blood pressure monitors and patient background information with analysis programs [1-3]. The Japanese Society of Hypertension (JSH) has created the “JSH Future Plan” with the aim of combating hypertension, which is the biggest cause of cardiovascular diseases, and to extend healthy life expectancy in a superaging society, and has proposed a new academic field called “digital hypertension” [4-6]. Digital hypertension is a new academic field that adds value to hypertension treatment and related medical care using ICT, and it can be recognized as an academic field of digital health that comprehensively promotes hypertension treatment and services using digital technology, clinical research, big data analysis using artificial intelligence (AI), and other approaches. This new field also features the development of new technologies and analysis methods such as sensors (wearable, cuffless, etc.), information processing, and machine learning (Figure) [1, 3, 7–13]. Digital hypertension projects may contribute to the understanding of hypertension, the development of treatment methods, and the promotion of prevention through the development of a health care platform that links and applies these technologies. There are increasing numbers of research papers on digital hypertension, including those on wearable and/or cuffless blood pressure monitoring [7-13], real-time home monitoring [1], real-world national big data analyses [14], and digital therapeutics [15, 16]. In clinical practice, the COVID-19 pandemic has facilitated the use of telemedicine and virtual management of hypertension [17, 18].

We welcome submissions of review articles and original papers related to research concepts and hypotheses on digital hypertension, sensor development, information processing, AI, clinical indicators, big data analysis, digital therapeutics, virtual management of hypertension, telemedicine, etc.