A Taxonomic Integrative Review of Short Message Service (SMS) Methodology: A Framework for Improved Diabetic Outcomes

Abstract

Background: To acquire self-management skills that affect clinical outcomes, collaboration and communication with one's health care team is essential, yet many health care systems are not designed adequately to be responsive to a patient's efforts to self-manage. This review synthesizes the intervention methodology of current studies facilitating the efforts of health care providers who wish to design, develop, and implement evidence-based SMS programs for patients with diabetes, focusing on clinical outcomes of A1C values, medication adherence rates, and participant satisfaction.

Methods: This integrative review was conducted using an integrative taxonomic analysis approach. This approach involves creating a classification system with domains or characteristics, defining the relationships between those domains, and creating a foundation for new theories or constructs.

Results: Synthesis of the evidence included in this integrated review suggests the best design for a SMS diabetes management program aimed at improving A1C levels, medication adherence rates, and participant satisfaction is an intervention providing weekly SMS education, with 2-way message direction, that is 3 months in length.

Conclusions: The studies in this review have demonstrated that SMS interventions can be an important part of a viable and effective program in the effort to better manage adults with type 2 diabetes.

Keywords: A1C value; diabetes type 2; self-management education; short message service (SMS); web-enabled technology.

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

© 2015 Diabetes Technology Society.

Figures

Figure 1.

Literature review process.

Figure 2.

SMS characteristics and HgA1C outcome.