A new mobile app is the first to give users customized blood pressure feedback from a top Canadian cardiologist. Health Media Today’s free blood pressure app was released in partnership with the Canadian Heart Research Centre (CHRC) in an effort to help patients track and monitor blood pressure with feedback from actual doctors. That’s the selling point here, the alliance with the Canadian medical community and not just an app that aggregates pre-existing data from the Internet. Before you stop reading take note: 19 per cent of Canadian adults have high blood pressure. This includes people in their 20’s.  Excessive alcohol consumption, poor diet, smoking and heavy stress loads contribute to an increased level of potential heart problems for young adults.

The app was released through the Apple App store last month. It allows users to log and store blood pressure information locally on their smartphone, view the logs in a graph, set and edit reminders and email blood pressure log records. An upgrade allows users to sync data with AwareMD.com, where they can view results and obtain feedback from qualified physicians.

Doctor Anatoly Langer will personally deliver and evaluate results to app users. Dr. Langer is a 1982 graduate from the University of Manitoba and completed his Internal Medicine and Cardiology training at the University of Toronto in 1987, where he currently is a professor of medicine. He’s also a staff cardiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital, a chair of the Canadian Heart Research Centre in Toronto, and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and Canadian Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons.

High blood pressure is the number one risk factor for stroke and a major risk factor for heart disease.

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Sheena Lyonnais is Toronto Standard’s Tech and Business Editor. You can follow her on Twitter at @SheenaLyonnais.

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