Mobile phone messaging for preventive health care

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Informatics
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Preventive healthcare aims to promote health and prevent diseases by addressing risk factors and detecting latent conditions.
• Healthcare systems often underutilize resources for prevention, despite many costly conditions being preventable.
• Mobile phone messaging applications (SMS, MMS) offer a cost-effective method to promote healthy behaviors for preventive care.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of mobile phone messaging interventions on health status and health behavior outcomes within preventive healthcare.
• To assess the effectiveness of Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS) for delivering preventive health information and support.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a systematic search of multiple databases (CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, LILACS, African Health Anthology) and grey literature from 1993 to 2009.
• Included randomized controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-randomized controlled trials (QRCTs), controlled before-after (CBA), and interrupted time series (ITS) studies.
• Extracted data on study design, participants, interventions, and outcomes, focusing on health status and behavior; meta-analysis was not performed due to study heterogeneity, with findings presented narratively.

Main Results:

• Moderate-quality evidence indicated higher satisfaction, confidence, and lower anxiety in pregnant women receiving prenatal support via mobile messages.
• Low-quality evidence showed no significant effect on pregnancy outcomes.
• Moderate-quality evidence demonstrated increased adherence to vitamin C supplementation and high-quality evidence showed higher smoking cessation rates at 6 and 12 weeks.
• Very low-quality evidence suggested no significant impact on physical activity or screen time for childhood weight control interventions.

Conclusions:

• Mobile phone messaging interventions show limited evidence of supporting preventive healthcare and improving health behaviors, particularly for smoking cessation.
• The overall quality of evidence is low to moderate, with significant limitations including small sample sizes and risk of bias.
• Further research is needed to address information gaps concerning long-term effects, risks, limitations, and user satisfaction with these interventions.