South African business KardioFit uses a smartphone app and iHealth’s blood pressure devices to enable people with hypertension or other blood pressure-related conditions to monitor their condition at home and share the data with their doctor directly. Users can also use a panic button in the app to summon an ambulance in the case of a “hypertensive emergency”. The question, though, is whether South African consumers, who are notoriously price sensitive, will be willing to pay the R239/month subscription for the service?

Included in the subscription is the mobile phone app — currently available for Android devices and coming to iOS devices on 10 October — an iHealth Bluetooth blood pressure monitor (worth R1,600), cloud storage for the data generated, along with monthly reporting that is sent to the subscriber and, should they wish, to their doctor.

Subscribers also get priority appointments for accredited hypertension institutes and the subscription includes the ambulance service in case of an appropriate emergency, courtesy of ER24’s emergency call centre.

If your emergency isn’t hypertension related, however, ER24 will assess the situation on a case-by-case basis and an additional fee might apply.

Kardiofit has also created HealthConnect, “a social community of partners who work together to guide the individual on a journey to wellness and vitality”. Partners include ER24, Run and Walk for life, BASA, The Women’s Heart Clinic, The Hypertension Institute of SA, Medispace, Weightwatchers and Pressurepoint. Subscribers can access these partners and, where applicable, get discounts on their services.

With the app, users can get reminders to performed scheduled monitoring or to take medication and will be told to see a doctor if the results of the monitoring suggest it’s necessary.

The company has hinted that it may partner with the likes of Discovery and Momentum in future. To our thinking this seems like a sensible way to go. If the subscription can be worked into existing medical aid premiums South African consumers are far less likely to balk at it.