Mobile phones and short message service texts to collect situational awareness data during simulated public health critical events

Abstract

Text messages are useful for timely communication during public health emergencies and for transmitting health data in infrastructure-limited settings. Little is known about the feasibility of two-way short message service (SMS) communication to collect public health preparedness and surveillance data. The authors aimed to determine the feasibility and acceptability of using two-way SMS texts to collect situational assessment (SA) data in simulated disaster events during a university-based pilot study. Eligible participants included university students with a mobile phone and messaging plan. Enrollment began in September 2009, and was open until the end of the study in May 2010. Participants attended a training session and provided demographic and phone use information using a baseline survey. Participants responded to SMS SAs that were sent directly to their phones throughout the study period. Frequency, completeness, and time to reporting were recorded for each procedure using an online commercial software package. Sixty-three participants enrolled; median age was 25 years, most were female (74.6 percent), lived off campus (76.2 percent), and were graduate students (76.2 percent). Most participants had a family/joint mobile phone account (73.0 percent) with unlimited messaging (60.3 percent). The median daily number of texts sent and received was 8 and 9, respectively. During five SAs, 194 (76.7 percent) of 253 prompted text surveys were completed. Nearly 60 percent of surveys were completed within 20 minutes of text deployment. Using two-way SMS communication for surveillance and reporting was feasible among a group of motivated students. Similar methods may provide timely data during public health critical events.