Be wary of studies that aim to determine the efficacy of “electronic messages” for chronic disease management if they were conducted four or five years ago. Four or five years may not seem like a long time for advances in chronic disease management but four years is an eon for electronic messaging.
A study conducted by physicians at Group Health Cooperative in Washington and Idaho tracked 2,924 diabetic adults who used electronic messaging systems to communicate with their physicians. The study took place from January 2004 to March 2005. The researchers concluded that there was a positive correlation between “e-messaging use” and positive patient outcomes. E-messaging use, however, led to a higher rate of outpatient visits.
Let’s take a look of one form of “e-messaging” that’s popular today: text messaging.
In 2004 just over 50 percent of the U.S. population had a cellphone and only about 35 percent of them ever sent a text messages. Over the course of that year users sent about 37 billion text messages, which is about 213 text messages sent per user — for the entire year.
Clearly times have changed.
Last year U.S. cellphone users exchanged 1 trillion text messages, which works out to about 3,704 text messages each during 2008. That’s about 10 texts per day.
Text messages, of course, are just one form of electronic messages, which could include instant messages, emails, voicemails, faxes, pages, social networking posts and so on. While the abstract published over at DiabetesCare does not specify which of these “e-messaging” tools were used by the diabetics tracked in the Group Health Cooperative study, it’s fair to say the U.S. population’s habitual use of each of them has changed since 2004.
While many medical studies probably should take years of investigation and research, those that are investigating the efficacy of using wireless or online messaging tools cannot afford to wait that long before publishing.
If they do, they’ll only serve as a time capsule for some bygone era where terms like “e-messaging” were still en vogue and only 20 out of 100 people had ever sent a text message.
For more, read this abstract from Diabetes Care’s July edition
Read this article about reaching the 1 Trillion text message mark
July 7th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
The usa is following the adoption trends of mobile messaging that we have seen around the world. some great insights can already be had by looking at markets like finland, japan and korea. For research in this area I can’t recommend “digital korea” by tomi ahonen too strongly.
July 8th, 2009 at 5:29 am
link to book http://www.digitalkorea.futuretext.com/
July 8th, 2009 at 9:47 am
I am an American, but I have been living abraod for many years. The use of text messaging in the healthcare field as been around, for several years. We do text reminders for the public healthcare systems in Australia and the UK. We remind patients about appointments, medications, subscription refills. This is another area the rest of the world leads the US, with lowering the cost of healthcare.
“The average text message is read with 20 minutes, the average email is read with 48 hours” (The Economist)
We have programs that allow hospitals, doctors offices or pharmacuticals to text from Outlook, Notes, the web or their CRM http://www.redoxygen.com
July 8th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
@Thomas Sheahan: I think the Economist is being optimistic about email. Microsoft have estimated that 97% of all email is spam and the lack of this (i think) is an equally important benefit of SMS.
http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/04/microsoft-97-percent-of-all-e-mail-is-spam.ars