Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments.
TLDR
Low to moderate quality evidence included in this review shows that mobile phone text messaging reminders increase attendance at healthcare appointments compared to no reminders, or postal reminders.Abstract:
Background
This review is an update of the original Cochrane review published in July 2012. Missed appointments are a major cause of inefficiency in healthcare delivery with substantial monetary costs for the health system, leading to delays in diagnosis and appropriate treatment. Patients' forgetfulness is one of the main reasons for missed appointments. Patient reminders may help reduce missed appointments. Modes of communicating reminders for appointments to patients include face-to-face communication, postal messages, calls to landlines or mobile phones, and mobile phone messaging. Mobile phone messaging applications, such as Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS), could provide an important, inexpensive delivery medium for reminders for healthcare appointments.
Objectives
To update our review assessing the effects of mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments. Secondary objectives include assessment of costs; health outcomes; patients' and healthcare providers' evaluation of the intervention and perceptions of safety; and possible harms and adverse effects associated with the intervention.
Search methods
Original searches were run in June 2009. For this update, we searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL,The Cochrane Library 2012, Issue 8), MEDLINE (OvidSP) (January 1993 to August 2012), EMBASE (OvidSP) (January 1993 to August 2012), PsycINFO (OvidSP) (January 1993 to August 2012) and CINAHL (EbscoHOST) (January 1993 to August 2012). We also reviewed grey literature (including trial registers) and reference lists of articles.
Selection criteria
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) assessing mobile phone messaging as reminders for healthcare appointments. We only included studies in which it was possible to assess effects of mobile phone messaging independent of other technologies or interventions.
Data collection and analysis
Two review authors independently assessed all studies against the inclusion criteria, with any disagreements resolved by a third review author. Study design features, characteristics of target populations, interventions and controls, and results data were extracted by two review authors and confirmed by a third author. Two authors assessed the risk of bias of the included studies. As the intervention characteristics and outcome measures were similar across included studies, we conducted a meta-analysis to estimate an overall effect size.
Main results
We included eight randomised controlled trials involving 6615 participants. Four of these studies were newly identified during this update.
We found moderate quality evidence from seven studies (5841 participants) that mobile text message reminders improved the rate of attendance at healthcare appointments compared to no reminders (risk ratio (RR) 1.14 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.03 to 1.26)). There was also moderate quality evidence from three studies (2509 participants) that mobile text message reminders had a similar impact to phone call reminders (RR 0.99 (95% CI 0.95 to 1.02). Low quality evidence from one study (291 participants) suggests that mobile text message reminders combined with postal reminders improved the rate of attendance at healthcare appointments compared to postal reminders alone (RR 1.10 (95% CI 1.02 to 1.19)). Overall, the attendance to appointment rates were 67.8% for the no reminders group, 78.6% for the mobile phone messaging reminders group and 80.3% for the phone call reminders group. One study reported generally that there were no adverse effects during the study period; none of the studies reported in detail on specific adverse events such as loss of privacy, data misinterpretation, or message delivery failure. Two studies reported that the costs per text message per attendance were respectively 55% and 65% lower than costs per phone call reminder. The studies included in the review did not report on health outcomes or people's perceptions of safety related to receiving reminders by text message.
Authors' conclusions
Low to moderate quality evidence included in this review shows that mobile phone text messaging reminders increase attendance at healthcare appointments compared to no reminders, or postal reminders.
Text messaging reminders were similar to telephone reminders in terms of their effect on attendance rates, and cost less than telephone reminders. However, the included studies were heterogeneous and the quality of the evidence therein is low to moderate. Further, there is a lack of information about health effects, adverse effects and harms, user evaluation of the intervention and user perceptions of its safety. The current evidence therefore still remains insufficient to conclusively inform policy decisions.
There is a need for more high-quality randomised trials of mobile phone messaging reminders, that measure not only patients’ attendance rates, but also focus on the cost-effectiveness of these interventions. Health outcomes, patients’ and healthcare providers’ evaluation and perceptions of the safety of the interventions, potential harms, and adverse effects of mobile phone messaging reminders should be assessed. Studies should report message content and timing in relation to the appointment.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The effectiveness of mobile-health technologies to improve health care service delivery processes: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Caroline Free,Gemma Phillips,Louise Watson,Leandro Galli,Lambert Felix,Phil Edwards,Vikram Patel,Andy Haines +7 more
TL;DR: Control trials of mobile technology interventions to improve health care delivery processes show that current interventions give only modest benefits and that high-quality trials measuring clinical outcomes are needed.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Impact of mHealth Interventions: Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews.
Milena Soriano Marcolino,João Antonio de Queiroz Oliveira,Marcelo D'Agostino,Antonio Luiz Pinho Ribeiro,Maria Beatriz Moreira Alkmim,David Novillo-Ortiz +5 more
TL;DR: Although mHealth is growing in popularity, the evidence for efficacy is still limited and for some fields, its impact is not evident, the results are mixed, or no long-term studies exist.
Journal ArticleDOI
Mobile phone messaging for facilitating self-management of long-term illnesses.
TL;DR: The effects of mobile phone messaging applications designed to facilitate self-management of long-term illnesses, in terms of impact on health outcomes and patients' capacity to self-manage their condition are assessed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Scaling up mHealth: where is the evidence?
TL;DR: A global strategy is proposed to determine needed evidence to support mHealth scale-up and whether there is sufficient evidence on implementation and effectiveness to match the wide enthusiasm for mHealth interventions.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Measuring inconsistency in meta-analyses
TL;DR: A new quantity is developed, I 2, which the authors believe gives a better measure of the consistency between trials in a meta-analysis, which is susceptible to the number of trials included in the meta- analysis.
Journal ArticleDOI
GRADE: an emerging consensus on rating quality of evidence and strength of recommendations
Gordon H. Guyatt,Andrew D Oxman,Gunn Elisabeth Vist,Regina Kunz,Yngve Falck-Ytter,Pablo Alonso-Coello,Holger J. Schünemann +6 more
TL;DR: The advantages of the GRADE system are explored, which is increasingly being adopted by organisations worldwide and which is often praised for its high level of consistency.
Journal ArticleDOI
Pharmacological interventions for somatoform disorders in adults.
Maria Kleinstäuber,Michael Witthöft,Andrés Steffanowski,Harm W.J. van Marwijk,Wolfgang Hiller,Michael J. Lambert +5 more
TL;DR: A systematic review and meta-analysis of placebo-controlled studies examined the efficacy and tolerability of different types of antidepressants, the combination of an antidepressant and an antipsychotic, antipsychotics alone, or natural products in adults with somatoform disorders in adults to improve optimal treatment decisions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Interventions for latent autoimmune diabetes (LADA) in adults.
TL;DR: Two studies show SU leading to earlier insulin dependence and a meta-analysis of four studies with considerable heterogeneity showed poorer metabolic control if SU is prescribed for patients with LADA compared to insulin.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Effectiveness of Mobile-Health Technology-Based Health Behaviour Change or Disease Management Interventions for Health Care Consumers: A Systematic Review
Caroline Free,Gemma Phillips,Leandro Galli,Louise Watson,Lambert Felix,Phil Edwards,Vikram Patel,Andy Haines +7 more
TL;DR: It is concluded that high-quality, adequately powered trials of optimized interventions are required to evaluate effects on objective outcomes.
Related Papers (5)
Effects of a mobile phone short message service on antiretroviral treatment adherence in Kenya (WelTel Kenya1): a randomised trial
Richard T. Lester,Richard T. Lester,Richard T. Lester,Paul Ritvo,Edward J Mills,Antony Kariri,Sarah Karanja,Michael H. Chung,William Jack,James Habyarimana,Mohsen Sadatsafavi,Mehdi Najafzadeh,Carlo A. Marra,Benson B. Estambale,Elizabeth N. Ngugi,T. Blake Ball,Lehana Thabane,Lawrence Gelmon,Lawrence Gelmon,Joshua Kimani,Joshua Kimani,Marta Ackers,Francis A. Plummer,Francis A. Plummer +23 more