Analysis of Medication Possession Ratio for Improved Blood Pressure Control – Towards a Semantic Web Technology Enabled Workbench

Using a patient management ontology developed on Semantic Web technologies, we have provided a framework and workbench to identify hypertensive patients with inadequate systolic blood pressure (SBP) control. We have populated our ontology with production electronic medical record data from a general medical practice in New Zealand. Medication Possession Ratio (MPR) is used as a key concept in grouping patients whose SBP control can be improved. We also provide a prescription timeline visualisation scheme to aid a clinician in understanding a patient’s antihypertensive prescribing patterns. Both to validate our workbench and to enable immediate care improvement and research, we have utilised our framework to model the association of prescribing-based MPR to SBP. While the aggregate observed improvement in SBP is 18.55 mmHg from full as compared to nil MPR, there are poorly controlled patients among both high and low MPR groups, indicating distinct cohorts for quality improvement follow-up.