Just as Google Maps suggests the best route, this calculator predicts how much different medicines are likely to lower blood pressure.
Published Aug 31, 2025 | 8:00 AM ⚊ Updated Aug 31, 2025 | 8:00 AM
Hypertension or high blood pressure is one of the important modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. (Creative Commons)
Synopsis: High blood pressure is a silent killer. It affects 1.3 billion people worldwide and causes around 10 million deaths annually. Often symptomless, it quietly damages the body until it results in a heart attack, stroke, or kidney disease. Yet, fewer than one in five patients have their hypertension under control.
Imagine trying to fill a leaking bucket with water. You have dozens of taps to choose from—some trickle slowly, some pour steadily, and others gush strongly. But you don’t know which one will give just the right amount of water, or how many taps you’ll need to finally fill the bucket. You keep trying tap after tap, losing time, and the bucket never fills properly.
Now replace the bucket with your blood pressure, the water with medicines, and the taps with the many blood pressure drugs available today. This has long been the challenge for doctors—because blood pressure naturally jumps around like a flickering light bulb, it is very difficult to know which medicines, in what doses or combinations, will best help a patient reach healthy levels.
To solve this puzzle, researchers at The George Institute for Global Health have unveiled the world’s first Blood Pressure Treatment Efficacy Calculator—a tool which simply works like “Google Maps for BP treatment.”
Just as Google Maps suggests the best route using data from millions of journeys, this calculator predicts how much different medicines—or combinations—are likely to lower blood pressure, based on data from nearly 500 randomised clinical trials involving over 100,000 people.
The study was published in The Lancet.
“This is really important because every 1 mmHg reduction in systolic blood pressure lowers your risk of heart attack or stroke by 2 percent,” said Dr Nelson Wang, cardiologist and Research Fellow at The George Institute.
“But with dozens of drugs, multiple doses per drug, and most patients needing two or more drugs, there are literally thousands of possible options, and no easy way to work out how effective they are,” he explained.
A single blood pressure pill typically lowers systolic BP by about 8–9 mmHg. But most patients require reductions of 15–30 mmHg to reach safe levels. That’s why the calculator classifies drugs into low, medium, and high intensity, similar to the gear system in a car—helping doctors select the right “gear” to bring BP down efficiently.
Traditionally, doctors have relied on repeated BP measurements to judge whether medicines are working. But Dr Wang said this approach is flawed.
“Blood pressure changes from moment to moment, day to day, and even with the seasons. These random fluctuations can easily be as big or larger than the changes brought about by treatment,” he noted.
“On top of that, measurement practices are often imperfect, adding another layer of uncertainty. This makes it very hard to reliably assess how well a medicine is working just by taking repeated readings.”
Speaking about the importance of the new tool, Dr Mohammad Abdul Salam, Program Head, Cardiovascular Research, The George Institute for Global Health, Hyderabad, said: “We cannot overlook the importance of controlling high blood pressure effectively and efficiently. Achieving optimal control requires a clear understanding of the efficacy of antihypertensive drugs at different doses and in various combinations. Without clarity on what we want to achieve and how to achieve it, we will not meet our targets. Guidelines define the target blood pressure, while our online tool helps identify which antihypertensive drugs are best suited to reach that target.”
According to Professor Anthony Rodgers, Senior Professorial Fellow at The George Institute, hypertension is the single most common reason people visit their doctor. Yet, until now, there has been no single, up-to-date resource showing how effective blood pressure medicines are—especially in combination.
“Using the calculator challenges the traditional ‘start low, go slow, measure and judge’ approach to treatment, which carries a high risk of being misled by BP readings, delays in care, or placing too much burden on patients,” he said.
“With this new method, you specify how much you need to lower blood pressure, choose an ideal treatment plan based on the evidence, and get the patient started sooner rather than later.”
The next step, researchers said, is to test the calculator in clinical trials where treatment will be guided by how much BP reduction is needed—rather than by trial-and-error adjustments.
High blood pressure is a silent killer. It affects 1.3 billion people worldwide and causes around 10 million deaths annually. Often symptomless, it quietly damages the body until it results in a heart attack, stroke, or kidney disease. Yet, fewer than one in five patients have their hypertension under control.
Professor Rodgers emphasised the enormous potential: “Even modest improvements will have a huge impact. If we can increase the percentage of people with controlled hypertension globally to just 50 percent, we could save millions of lives.”
The Blood Pressure Treatment Efficacy Calculator is freely available to doctors and researchers worldwide at www.bpmodel.org.
By turning decades of fragmented clinical trial data into a practical, patient-centred tool, scientists believe this innovation could mark a turning point in the battle against one of the world’s deadliest but most preventable conditions.
(Edited by Amit Vasudev)
