Text Messaging as a Tool for Behavior Change in Disease Prevention and Management

Recently I posted a few different pieces about technology being used to help people quit smoking, lose weight, and even manage their diabetes.  A new study is showing how valuable text messaging can be when it comes to managing your health.  It is by far the most expansive study I have read and makes a lot of interesting points and logical conclusions.

One of the biggest advantages to text messaging is that it is already widely used, and it is extremely inexpensive to use.  This low cost allows organizations without major financial backing to use text messaging as a tool for their patients.  There is no need create a new device or develop expensive software.  You simply use text messaging to distribute the desired messages to your patients.

The study specifically referenced studies that showed how text messaging was beneficial to people that were trying to quit smoking by holding them accountable for their actions.  The same principle applied to people that were trying to lose weight.  Taking responsibility for your actions is a huge part of both of these issues, and using text messaging allowed the affected people to accept that responsibility.

Text messaging can also be used to help manage diseases such as diabetes by sending out reminders to the patients.  There are so many aspects to properly managing diabetes that getting helpful reminders can only be a good thing.

While the study doesn’t compare text messaging to other technology that can be used for managing our health it does an excellent job of analyzing the benefits of this inexpensive and widely used technology.  The numbers that they present are quite staggering in some areas, and it is definitely worth a look at the complete study.

   

Categories