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Mobile phone use and willingness to pay for SMS for diabetes in Bangladesh
Sheikh Mohammed Shariful Islam1, Andreas Lechner2, Uta Ferrari2
1Center for Control of Chronic Diseases (CCCD), International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (Icddr,b), 68 Shaheed Tajuddin Ahmed Sarani, Mohakhali, Dhaka 1212, Bangladesh Center for International Health (CIH), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Leopoldstraße 7, München 80802, Germany.
Background:
Mobile phone SMS is increasingly used as a means of communication between patients and their healthcare providers in many countries of the world. We investigated mobile phone use and factors associated with willingness-to-pay (WTP) for diabetes SMS among patients with type 2 diabetes in Bangladesh.
Methods:
As part of a randomized controlled study, in 515 patients with type 2 diabetes, socioeconomic status, mobile phone use, WTP for diabetes SMS, anthropometry and HbA1c were measured. Multivariate regression was used to identify factors associated with WTP.
Results:
The median (interquartile range [IQR]) of WTP for diabetes SMS was 20 (45) Bangladesh Taka (BDT) (1 BDT = 0.013 US$). WTP was significantly higher for males [OR 2.4, 95% CI (1.0-5.7)], patients with household income >50 000 BDT [4.6 (1.1-20.4)] and those with primary education [5.6 (1.2-26.6)] and secondary and higher education [5.2 (1.4-19.6)].
Conclusions:
The high proportion of mobile phone use and WTP for diabetes SMS are encouraging as possible strategy to use such technologies and deserve further evaluation.
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