MedAdherence is letting patients text message their doctors daily with blood sugar levels and receive advice back via SMS.

The company has partnered with Clickatell, which specializes in personalized priority messaging. Based on their blood sugar level, patients receive texts back from their doctors regarding when they should take their specific medication, feedback on the success of their treatment or early warning signs of a worsening condition.

?We think that the healthcare use cases for personalized priority messaging are compelling for both practitioners and patients, from dentist appointment reminders to alerts regarding medication expiry dates and even enabling recipients to respond to messages,? said Llew Claasen, Vice president of marketing, Clickatell, Redwood City, CA.

MedAdherence is a healthcare company providing care plan automation and communication solutions to prevent the serious medical complications and costs associated with people failing to follow their healthcare provider?s prescribed care plans.

Clickatell specializes in personalized priority messaging through all mobile devices. Other healthcare clients include Primary Care Trusts and AllOne Health.

Mobile health
Mobile works extremely well in the healthcare industry because SMS messages are personalized and time or context-sensitive, when having to do with a patient?s health.

Through SMS, healthcare providers can help their patients stay connected with medical professionals on an immediate basis.

Some use cases include patients receiving confirmation messages when an appointment is made, a reminder message with a link to directions in Google Maps and follow-up communication to remind patients of an upcoming appointment.

"Through the partnership, MedAdherence enables patients to text message their doctors and caregivers daily to ensure adherence and to measure and monitor key bio-metric data," said Jonathan D. Katz, CEO of MedAdherence, Norwalk, CT.

"Clickatell's work with MedAdherence is one of the many collaborations the company has formed in their efforts to help the healthcare sector improve doctor-to-patient communication," he said.

Patients constantly being informed reduces no-shows and associated costs, improves the chances of patients correctly medicating and provides patients with a reassuring line of communication directly back to their healthcare provider.

Increasingly, consumers are opting for text messaging as a form of communication with brands, merchants, financial institutions and healthcare providers.

"We are extremely excited about working with Clickatell to provide patients the ability to manage their chronic diseases in a new and dynamic way," Mr. Katz said.

According to Nielsen, people between the ages of 12-17 send and receive more than 3,300 text messages per month. Those between the ages of 18-25 send and receive approximately 1,800 text messages monthly, and the 25-35 age group sends and receives 600, while 35-45 year-olds are at around 300.

Additionally, more than 75 billion texts are sent each month in the United States and, on average, 95 percent of those messages are opened and read by the recipient within 5 minutes of receiving it, Nielsen found.

Recent research by the Direct Marketing Association suggests that direct response rates for SMS text messages can be anywhere between 26 percent and 51 percent, significantly higher than those achieved through telemarketing, email and direct mail.

By sending alert notifications through text messaging, healthcare providers are able to stay better connected with their patients.

?We believe that the inherently personal nature of the channel, its push-messaging capability, mobility and ubiquity will drive huge growth in valuable mobile alerts via SMS, over the next 24 months,? Mr. Claasen said.

Final Take
Mackenzie Allison is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer