College of Health Science, Health Informatics Department, Mettu University, Mettu, Ethiopia
Health Informatics Department, University of Gondar College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Gondar, Ethiopia.
BMJ Health Care Inform. 2022 Nov;29(1). doi: 10.1136/bmjhci-2022-100671.
Patients frequently miss their medical appointments. Therefore, short message service (SMS) has been used as a strategy for medical and healthcare service appointment reminders. This systematic review aimed to identify barriers to SMS appointment reminders across African regions.
PubMed, Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar and Web of Science were used for searching, and hand searching was done. Original studies written in English, conducted in Africa, and published since 1 December 2018, were included. The standard quality assessment checklist was used for the quality appraisal of the included studies. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses flowchart diagram was used for study selection and screening, and any disagreements were resolved via discussions.
A total of 955 articles were searched, 521 studies were removed due to duplication and 105 studies were assessed for eligibility. Consequently, nine studies met the inclusion criteria. Five out of nine included studies were done by randomised control trials. The barriers that hampered patients, mothers and other parental figures of children when they were notified via SMS of medical and health services were identified. Among the 11 identified barriers, illiteracy, issues of confidentiality, familiarised text messages, inadequate information communication technology infrastructure, being a rural resident and loss of mobile phones occurred in at least two studies.
SMS is an effective and widely accepted appointment reminder tool. However, it is hampered by numerous barriers. Hence, we gathered summarised information about users' barriers to SMS-based appointment reminders. Therefore, stakeholders should address existing identified barriers for better Mhealth interventions.
CRD42022296559.
患者经常错过医疗预约。因此，短信服务（SMS）已被用作医疗和医疗保健服务预约提醒的策略。本系统评价旨在确定非洲地区 SMS 预约提醒的障碍。
使用 PubMed、Google Scholar、Semantic Scholar 和 Web of Science 进行搜索，并进行手工搜索。纳入的研究必须是 2018 年 12 月 1 日以后发表的、用英文书写的、在非洲进行的原始研究。采用标准质量评估清单对纳入研究进行质量评估。采用系统评价和荟萃分析报告的首选条目流程图对研究进行选择和筛选，任何分歧均通过讨论解决。
共搜索到 955 篇文章，其中 521 篇因重复而被删除，105 篇文章被评估为符合条件。因此，有 9 项研究符合纳入标准。9 项纳入研究中有 5 项为随机对照试验。确定了通过短信通知医疗和卫生服务时阻碍患者、母亲和儿童其他父母的障碍。在确定的 11 个障碍中，有至少两个研究报告了文盲、保密性问题、熟悉的短信、信息通信技术基础设施不足、农村居民和手机丢失等问题。
SMS 是一种有效且广泛接受的预约提醒工具。然而，它受到许多障碍的阻碍。因此，我们收集了有关用户对基于 SMS 的预约提醒障碍的总结信息。因此，利益相关者应解决现有已确定的障碍，以实现更好的移动健康干预。
PROSPERO 注册号：CRD42022296559。
