VMH Health is developing a point of care, urine based, in-vitro diagnostic test for essential hypertension.  This simple, urine based test, which can be administered in the physician' office ascertains whether patients have volume expansion-mediated hypertension or vasconstriction-mediated hypertension, or a combination of both.  Currently, physicians do not have a means of definitively diagnosing this etiology of hypertension.

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a worldwide epidemic: by 2025 there will be more than 1.5 billion sufferers of this disease worldwide. Changing demographics including the aging population, modern lifestyles such as poor diet and lack of exercise, and the emerging epidemics of diabetes and obesity, have resulted in a rapid increase in the incidence and prevalence of hypertension in both developed and developing countries.

In the United States alone, about 30% of people will suffer from hypertension at some time in their lives. Thus, at any one time as many as 72 million Americans may have hypertension.