A multicenter clinical trial to assess the efficacy of the digital therapeutics for essential hypertension: Rationale and design of the HERB‐DH1 trial

Digital therapeutics is a new approach to treat hypertension via using software programs such as smartphone apps and/or device algorithms. We develop a HERB system—new interactive smartphone app (HERB Mobile) with web‐based patient management console (HERB Console)—to lower blood pressure (BP) based on an algorithm that helps users to promote lifestyle modifications in conjunction with medically validated non‐pharmacological interventions. The app can assess the personalities, behavior characteristics, and hypertension determinants of each patient with hypertension to provide adequate guidance. To demonstrate the efficacy of the system, we designed a randomized, controlled, multicenter, open‐label trial “HERB‐DH1 (HERB digital hypertension 1)” to assess the efficacy of HERB system in patients with essential hypertension. The authors allocate patients to the intervention group (HERB system + standard lifestyle modification) or to the control group (standard lifestyle modification alone). In the intervention group, we provide the HERB Mobile for patients and the HERB Console for their primary physicians for 24 weeks. Both groups are instructed for standard lifestyle modifications based on the current recommendations in the Japanese Society of Hypertension 2019 guideline. The primary outcome is the mean change from baseline to 12 weeks in 24‐hour systolic BP measured by ambulatory BP monitoring. We started this study in December of 2019, and the trial results will be expected in early 2021. We believe that this trial enables us to verify the efficacy of the HERB system in patients with essential hypertension.