Comparison of an SMS text messaging and phone reminder to improve attendance at a health promotion center:A randomized controlled trial

Objective: To compare the efficacy of a short messaging service (SMS) text messaging and phone reminder to im-prove attendance rates at a health promotion center. Methods: A total of 1 859 participants who had scheduled appointments in the health promotion center of our hospital from April 2007 to May 2007 were enrolled in the study and randomly assigned into 3 groups: control (no reminder) group,SMS text messaging reminder group and telephone reminder group. Attendance rates and costs of interventions were collected. Results: A total of 1848 participants were eligible for analysis. Attendance rates of control,SMS and telephone groups were 80.5%,87.5% and 88.3%,respectively. The attendance rates were significantly higher in SMS and telephone groups than that in the control group,with odds ratio 1.698,95% confidence interval 1.224 to 2.316,P=0.001 in the SMS group,and odds ratio 1.829,95% confidence interval 1.333 to 2.509,P<0.001 in the telephone group. However,there was no difference between the SMS group and the telephone group (P=0.670). The cost effectiveness analysis showed that the cost per attendance for the SMS group (0.31 Yuan) was significantly lower than that for the telephone group (0.48 Yuan). Conclusion: SMS and telephone are effective reminders for improving attendance rate at a health promotion center. SMS reminder may be more cost-effective compared with the telephone reminder.

Software Architecture and Prototype for Supporting Medical Prescription Adherence Using SMS Services

Barriers to medication adherence among patients have been shown to have significant impact on service quality and cost in the healthcare system. To minimize this impact, many in the healthcare industry are highly interested in supporting prescription adherence among patients. They believe that information technology in general, and mobile technology in particular, can help in developing medical practices that can be highly conducive to high rates of prescription adherence by enhancing communication between patients and healthcare providers. To this end, a number of pharmacy management benefit companies plan to adopt SMS （Short Message Service） communication to reach their customers given the wider acceptance of SMS messaging among mobile phone users. However, most of these pharmacies are reluctant to purchase service agreements from SMS aggregators without a complete understanding of user, service and business requirements related to SMS messaging. Hence, many are in dire needs for prototypes of SMS servers that can help them define and refine these requirements before committing to costly agreements with SMS aggregators. This paper describes such a prototype for a pharmacy benefit management company located in the southeast of the United States.

Punctuation as a sociolinguistic variable in text messages

The development of text messaging in cell phones has influenced punctuation variations in written language. In order to determine how text messaging has resulted in paradigm shift in the traditional uses of punctuation marks, this paper explores how punctuation marks vary with language, location, register and time, and how they are constantly evolving. The discussion in this paper is structured around Coupland＇s sociolinguistic theory. The findings reveal that new technology has impacted on the traditional uses of punctuation marks. Thus, the results show that the use of punctuation markers in Short Message Service （SMS） texts is complex. Moreover, the use of punctuation marks in Kenyan text messages reveals personal stylistic choices. However, it is apparent that Kenyan text messages are shaped by social variables.

SMS-Parking Service Introduced in Oman

Mobile computing has increased quite rapidly over the past few years. The major drivers of mobile computing are large number of mobile phone users. As their number is increasing worldwide, different organizations are offering their services using the mobile devices. Oman is a developing country that strives to adapt M-services. The number of mobile phone users in Oman increased substantially since its launch in 1996. Prepaid mobile services and SMS （Short Message Services） were introduced in 2001 and both are currently popular with subscribers. Such fine appeal influenced many government organizations to go mobile with their services. This paper describes the SMS-Parking service, which is introduced recently by a joint venture of the Muscat Municipality and the Oman Mobile company offering mobile services to its citizens and reports the initial feedback of its users. This study shows that the new service is not yet popular among its users and may need their more positive attitudes toward it for its quick adoption.

Design and Development an Interactive On-the-Job Training Monitoring and Help Desk System with SMS for College of Information and Communication Technology

This study aimed to develop An Interactive On-the-Job Training Monitoring and Help Desk System with SMS for the College of Information and Communication Technology Nueva Ecija University of Science and Technology. The system made the OJT course procedure trouble-free by emerging a system accessible through the internet. Students have a user account, which gives them the aptitude to upload document files of their reports, thereby minimizing the time and energy spent traveling from the company’s location to the university and the other way around. Similarly, the OJT coordinators of the college are given their accounts to access and check the reports submitted by the students. The system is capable of generating reports and requirements in real-time, as long as all data is stored within the database and, therefore, the process is completed online. In addition, the system provides an interactive website that might help both students and coordinators to communicate instantaneously by having an online help desk where the students can ask related questions on their OJT course that the OJT coordinator and other students will answer. The coordinators can send a brief message service to the students enrolled within the OJT course through the utilization of the proposed system - this can be for the students who aren’t capable of opening their account more often, in order that they are still informed of the announcements they need to understand immediately. The interactive OJT help desk system with SMS can be used as a tool to help the students of the College of Information and Communication Technology (CICT) and the OJT coordinators in their tasks more conveniently.

SMS Encryption and Decryption Using Modified Vigenere Cipher Algorithm

Despite many online messaging services,short message service(SMS)is still used because of its simplicity.However,such services can be easily cracked,making SMS more vulnerable to send confidential information.Therefore,appropriate cryptographic algorithms must be applied to ensure security.One of the most common cryptographic techniques used for encrypting and decrypting messages is the Vigenere cipher.However,Vigenere cipher can be cracked easily because the previous approach involved 26×10 matrixes,and the key comprised of alphabets.If the key length is small,then it becomes easier to crack the plain text by permutation.So here in this work,we have proposed a modified Vigenere cipher technique to enhance its security standards.Existing Vigenere cipher attack is not more secured,and thus we developed a method that improves the security in Vigenere cipher using Rivest-Shamir-Adleman(RSA).RSA is an asymmetric algorithm that has public and private keys.The advantage of using this algorithm is that finding factors for the large composite numbers is difficult.This method is secured but time consuming.In this proposed method,we combined RSA with Vigenere cipher so that the proposed algorithm is secured and consumes less time than RSA algorithm.This approach is widely used to encrypt SMS.