BACKGROUND Non-attendance results in administrative problems and disruption in patient care. Several interventions have been used to reduce non-attendance, with varying degree of success. A relatively new intervention, text messaging, has been shown to be as effective as telephone reminders in reducing non-attendance. However, no study has looked specifically at using text messaging reminders t...

As mobile devices become more data-centric, text-messaging requires extension of telepresence capabilities for better interactive discussion between input/output-handicapped handheld users and their desktop counterparts. We are looking into the SIP Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions to provide fast-track interactive and telepresence feedback for text messaging on handhelds in ...

Text messaging health promotion projects continue to proliferate due to their relative low-cost, simplicity, non-intrusiveness, and proven effectiveness in several randomized controlled trials. In these past trials, participants have typically been recruited through traditional means, received the text messaging intervention, and then completed evaluation. In this issue of the Journal of Medica...

BACKGROUND Short message service (SMS) text messaging is an efficient form of communication and pervasive in health care, but may not securely protect patient information. It is unclear if resident providers are aware of the security concerns of SMS text messaging when communicating about patient care. OBJECTIVE We sought to compare residents' preferences for SMS text messaging compared with ...

BACKGROUND Face-to-face interviews by trained field workers are commonly used in household surveys. However, this data collection method is labor-intensive, time-consuming, expensive, prone to interviewer and recall bias and not easily scalable to increase sample representativeness. OBJECTIVE To explore the feasibility of using text messaging to collect information on infant and young child f...

OBJECTIVES (1) To develop methods for conducting cluster randomised trials of text messaging interventions utilising routine electronic health records at low cost; (2) to assess the effectiveness of text messaging influenza vaccine reminders in increasing vaccine uptake in patients with chronic conditions. DESIGN Cluster randomised trial with general practices as clusters. SETTING English p...

OBJECTIVE This study investigated the effects of using a cell phone to retrieve and send text messages on the driving performance of young novice drivers. BACKGROUND Young drivers are particularly susceptible to driver distraction and have an increased risk of distraction-related crashes. Distractions from in-vehicle devices, particularly, those that require manual input, are known to cause d...