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This year’s International Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL) conference took place in Cologne, Germany on 13-16 October, with the Vitaccess team represented by Sam Llewellyn and Sally Vincent, our Director and Associate Director of Patient-Centered Research, respectively. In this “ISOQOL shorts”, we provide a summary of Sam’s oral presentation on “Leveraging SMS for patient-reported data collection”.
With the majority of the world’s human population using mobile phones, Short Message Services (SMSes) are a common and effective means of transmitting information in a matter of seconds. SMS notifications can be used in the realm of digital data capture to remind users to complete required actions or to easily share administrative information which would otherwise be shared via email – which, research has shown, can have a much lower comparative open rate1.
At Vitaccess, alongside the use of SMS notifications, we are implementing SMS surveys in an increasing number of our patient-centered research studies. Such surveys could include a single question requesting a Yes/No answer, distributed on a more frequent basis than typical patient-reported outcome measures. This methodology facilitates granular data capture by taking advantage of the low burden of SMSes for study participants, as well as their speed, flexibility, and accessibility as a mode of communication. Countering this, researchers should take into account that SMSes may be hindered by lack of detail as well as privacy and security considerations.
Overall, SMS surveys have the potential to drive strong participant engagement by providing an alternative and effective means of capturing granular patient-reported data. If you are interested in learning more, check out the full abstract on our Publications page, or reach out to a member of our team at https://vitaccess.com/contact/.
By Fatemeh Amini and Sam Llewellyn
