Text message-based health surveys distributed to 6,694 Liberians during an Ebola outbreak were generally on par with baseline demographic data collected in a prior household survey, according to a study recently published in Nature Digital Medicine. Further, the text surveys suggested that women sought fewer hospital-based deliveries during the outbreak, a trend consistent with other...
A new large-scale study shows that interactive, tailored text messages can improve medication adherence by 14 percent.
"The program results far exceed our expectations with 44 percent refill rate in the text message group as compared to 30 percent in the non-text group," Rena Brar Prayaga, the paper’s corresponding author and a behavioral data scientist at mPulse Mobile, said in a statement. "In...
Norwalk, Connecticut-based QueueDr, which uses text messages to help doctors fill last minute cancellations, has raised $1.2 million from Rolling Hill Ventures. The funding, which is the first post-seed round for the three-year-old company, will be used to accelerate the company’s growth, according to CEO Patrick Randolph. Previous investors include Launchpad Digital Health and 500 Startups....
Sense Health, a texting software company focused on Medicaid care managers, has signed a deal with Coordinated Behavioral Care’s (CBC) Health Home, a nonprofit that oversees more than 50 Medicaid care management agencies in New York City.
CBC will deploy Sense Health in 12 of its member agencies to start. The program has a potential reach of 1,500 new Medicaid beneficiaries. With Sense Health,...
A small study published in Diabetes Care, the journal of the American Diabetes Association, shows that personalized text messages with positive and negative feedback are more effective than texts that are simply reminders.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Israeli Institute of Technology and one researcher was affiliated with Microsoft Research. They split 27 patients into a seven-...
HealthCrowd has raised $2.1 million to expand the scope of its patient outreach business in several different ways. Startup Capital Ventures, Herlitz Capital, Healthy Ventures, Band of Angels, Berkeley Angel Network, and 37 Angels all participated in the seed round.
"Most people in the industry, as well as the Medicaid space, know us as the text messaging platform," CEO Bing Doh told...
A relatively large randomized control trial in Australia has shown that a text messaging program can improve not only health behaviors, but actually affect health outcomes. The 2-year study of 710 patients with coronary heart disease, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that six months of a text messaging intervention produced significant reduction in cholesterol,...
In a pilot that included more than 350 chronic heart failure patients, a Philadelphia hospital was able to reduce its 30-day readmissions by 10 percent -- a 40 percent improvement over baseline -- by using email and text message reminders to get patients into follow-up appointments. Dr. Thompson Boyd, physician liaison at Hahnemann Hospital and Richard Imbimbo, the hospital's CFO, spoke at HIMSS...
More than any other channel, text messaging is a proven way to improve patient engagement and health outcomes while remaining cost-effective for healthcare providers. From appointment reminders, to general behavior change and managing chronic health conditions, studies increasingly show that text messaging is an effective tool for engaging patients. By communicating with people on an intimate...
A slide from Fred Muench's presentation shows the effect of different message styles on binge drinking.
Evidence continues to emerge that when it comes to text message-based health interventions, not all text messages are created equal. That's the message of two preliminary research presentations -- both text-message-based behavioral interventions focused on problem drinking -- given at the...
