Age played a major role in Chilean women’s attitudes toward text message reminders for Papanicolaou (Pap) testing, according to a small study published by JMIR mHealth and uHealth.
The study set out to investigate the barriers preventing Chilean women from getting tested for cervical cancer by setting up focus groups to talk to patients. Twenty-seven women between the ages of 25 and 64 who did...
Earlier this week, MobiHealthNews reported on positive – albeit vague – preliminary results from a pilot test of WellDoc's DiabetesManager system among employees of health insurer Health Care Service Corp. (HCSC) who had type 2 diabetes.
But what does it really mean that 88 percent of the 156 participants called DiabetesManager "highly useful" for self-management of their condition?
Denise Harper...
A new study of overweight teens published in the journal Obesity reveals the most effective ways text messages could be used to encourage healthy behavior change in adolescents, reports the LA Times.
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, who believe tailored text messages could help teens adopt healthier lifestyle changes. Four focus groups consisting of 24 male...
Amos Adler, President, Memotext
Glaucoma, the world’s second leading cause of blindness, has a number of effective therapies to help those afflicted. Despite these solutions, non-adherence rates for those treatments are reported to be between thirty-seven and fifty-nine percent. Luckily, mobile health professionals are working on ways to solve this issue. One such company, Memotext, has been...
By Judy Meehan, CEO, National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition
Tragically, in the U.S. approximately 28,000 babies die before their first birthday, despite a volume of science around behaviors that improve a baby’s chances for a healthy birth and opportunity to thrive. Text4baby was developed to deliver evidence-based health information to the women who need it most: the 1.5 million...
A similar service for expectant mothers
A physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital found that sending text messages to predominantly Spanish-speaking, urban, low-income parents increased the chances those parents would bring their children in to receive a flu vaccine. Melissa Stockwell, MD, MPH, assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at Columbia University, New York Presbyterian Hospital...
The Pediatric Heart Transplant Program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital has tapped CareSpeak Communications for a two-way text message-enabled medication adherence program for teenage heart transplant patients and their families. CareSpeak's program aims to help patients take their medications at the right time and as prescribed in an effort to decrease the likelihood of...
By Rob Havasy (@rob_havasy), Business Analyst and mHealth Strategist at the Center for Connected Health
Recent announcements about smartphone data plan pricing by AT&T and Verizon have the Internet and the mHealth world buzzing. Both companies have announced a move away from flat-rate, unlimited data plans in favor of tiered data plans where users are charged for amounts of data used above a...
A new report conducted by the New England Healthcare Institute (NEHI) found that not taking medications as prescribed leads to poorer health, more frequent hospitalization, a higher risk of death and as much as $290 billion annually in increased medical costs. Anywhere from one-third to one-half of patients in the U.S. do not take their medications as instructed. Not taking the medication on time...
In a wide-ranging interview with Mobihealthnews, the Center for Connected Health's Founder and Director Dr. Joseph Kvedar recently discussed the center's various wireless health programs, belief in text messages for healthcare, assessment of the likely early adopters of wireless health services and the need to not lose sight of the challenges facing this emerging industry.
Mobihealthnews: While...
