The role of mobile phones in improving vaccination rates in travelers

• HIT Description: short message service (SMS) text reminders regarding vaccinations More info...
  
• Purpose of Study: assess whether text messaging by mobile phone with computer-generated reminders regarding the data of the next vaccine dose would lead to increased compliance with hepatitis A and B vaccine schedules
  
• Years of study: 2001
  
• Study Design: controlled clinical trial
  
• Outcomes: impact on health care effectiveness and quality
  

• Settings: travelers who attended the International-Clinic Vaccination Centre, a travel clinic in Spain
• Intervention: travelers with mobile phones who agreed to participate and who were seen in two of the three offices within the Centre received pre-programmed messages regarding upcoming vaccination doses that were due. The control groups consisted of patients receiving the same vaccines from the third office over the same time period; and, subjects who had received the vaccines in the previous year.
• Evaluation Method: chart review
• Description: mobile phone number information was entered into a web page for processing by mBusiness platform (GlaxoSmithKline) which sends out pre-programmed messages at programmed times.
• Quality of Care and Patient Safety Outcome: SMS text messaging appear to increase compliance with vaccination doses: for the second hepatitis A and B dose, compliance was 88.4% in the study group, and 80.7% and 77.2% in the two control groups, respectively. For the third vaccine doses, compliance was 47.1% in the study group compared to 26.9% and 23.6% in the control groups