Text messaging saves lives in the UK

Text messaging applications have found a unique niche in the emergency and medical industries of the UK. These industries are finding bulk text messaging to not only be a cheaper way of communicating with patients but also a highly effective one. In some cases the ability of a person to send a text message has saved lives or averted a situation in which lives may have been lost.

Hospitals and medical organisations across the country are making use of bulk text messaging to diagnose and interact with patients. A rather unique application of text messaging is as a diagnostic tool for Festival Medical Services (FMS). A private company that provides trained medical personnel to music festivals throughout the UK, FMS uses text messages as a diagnostic tool. Many of their patients are teenagers who have fainted or are experiencing panic attacks while at the festivals; they ask patients to send a text message to friends when they feel up to it. Once they are able to send a text message, they are immediately discharged from the tent. Apparently, according to the British Medical Journal (BMJ 2008: 337:a2723) the ability to text demonstrates that patients are fully conscious, have an ‘adequately functioning executive system in the front lobes and a high degree of manual dexterity and psychomotor coordination’. Strange but true!

Another example of SMS diagnostic use is a pilot project run by Oxford’s University Department of Psychiatry. Bulk text messages are sent on a daily basis to mental health patients requiring them to respond with a letter indicating their present mood. This allows timely intervention by medical personnel as well as real time monitoring of the psychiatric state of patients.

Kent Police Headquarters launched a SMS service for deaf and speech-impaired people last year; this text messaging service allows these people to text emergency services when they require help. The text message is then channelled to the relevant organisation – the police, medical or rescue services. And at the beginning of 2009, Lancashire police launched a SMS police hotline for knife crimes particularly focused on schools. Pupils are encouraged to text the name of pupils carrying knives to schools. This scheme is already running in London with great success.

London’s Hammersmith & Fulham Primary Care Trust uses bulk text messaging to establish the current smoking status of patients, update their medical records and help patients stay up to date with prescriptions. Bulk text messaging is certainly a cheaper and more effective way of monitoring patients and 2-way SMS allows interaction between medical personnel and patients.

With over 70% of UK citizens’ texting regularly and over 4.7 million text messages sent every hour in Britain (Text.it), text messaging has become a vital component of how we interact with the world. Wikipedia estimates that there are now more mobile phones than people in the UK!

A pilot site for the UK National Health Service, the Heart of Birmingham Primary Care Trust (PCT) provides primary healthcare services to the people living in the centre of Birmingham, over 300,000 of them. They have found that bulk text messaging is the most cost-effective way (up to 95% cheaper) to provide patients with healthcare information and to ask them for information. Bulk text messaging that can be triggered according to keywords works for them as it reliable, immediate and offers a discreet way of passing on information.

Bulk text messaging is used in emergency and medical fields to pass on information, to send reminders, to offer support and send alerts. Patients are able to access the information that they need and want, when they want, through text messages. The role of bulk text messaging in these specific industries can be applied across a variety of industries to similar effect.

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Tags: 2 way SMS, bulk sms, bulk text messaging, mobile marketing, SMS diagnostics, sms gateway, sms marketing, sms software, text messages, text messaging, text messaging applications