Effects of and satisfaction with short message service reminders for patient medication adherence: a randomized controlled study.
BACKGROUND
Medication adherence is critical for patient treatment. This study involved evaluating how implementing Short Message Service (SMS) reminders affected patient medication adherence and related factors.


METHODS
We used a structured questionnaire to survey outpatients at three medical centers. Patients aged 20 years and older who were prescribed more than 7 days of a prescription medication were randomized into SMS intervention or control groups. The intervention group received daily messages reminding them of aspects regarding taking their medication; the control group received no messages. A phone follow-up was performed to assess outcomes after 8 days. Data were collected from 763 participants in the intervention group and 435 participants in the control group.


RESULTS
After participants in the intervention group received SMS reminders to take medication or those in the control group received no messages, incidences of delayed doses were decreased by 46.4 and 78.8% for those in the control and intervention groups, respectively. The rate of missed doses was decreased by 90.1% for participants in the intervention group and 61.1% for those in the control group. We applied logistic regression analysis and determined that participants in the intervention group had a 3.2-fold higher probability of having a decrease in delayed doses compared with participants in the control group. Participants in the intervention group also showed a 2.2-fold higher probability of having a decrease in missed doses compared with participants in the control group.


CONCLUSIONS
Use of SMS significantly affected the rates of taking medicine on schedule. Therefore, daily SMS could be useful for reminding patients to take their medicine on schedule.
Hsiu-Ling
HL
Huang
Yu-Chuan Jack
YC
Li
Yueh-Ching
YC
Chou
Yow-Wen
YW
Hsieh
Frank
F
Kuo
Department of Health Services Administration, China Medical University, 91, Hsueh-Shih Road, Taichung 40402, Taiwan. wtsai@mail.cmu.edu.tw.
Wen-Chen
WC
Tsai
Sinkuo Daniel
SD
Chai
Blossom Yen-Ju
BY
Lin
Pei-Tseng
PT
Kung
Chia-Jung
CJ
Chuang
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055118:Medication Adherence / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D017010:Reminder Systems / Q000592:standards*; D060145:Text Messaging / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016903:Drug Monitoring