In Australia, a study (SMARTscreen) aimed to test whether a multi-intervention short message service (SMS) sent by general practices to 50–60-year-old patients who were due to receive the NBCSP (national bowel cancer screening programme) kit would increase NBCSP uptake, by comparing it with usual care (1):
- for intervention practices, people due to receive the NBCSP kit within a 6-month study period were sent an SMS just before receiving the kit
- SMS included a personalised message from the person’s general practice endorsing the kit, a motivational narrative video, an instructional video, and a link to more information
- control practices continued with usual care, comprising at-home testing with a faecal immunochemical test (FIT) through the NBCSP
- study results showed that:
- 39.2% (1143/2914) of people in 11 intervention practices and 23.0% (583/2537) of people in 10 control practices had a FIT result in their electronic health records - a difference of 16.5% (95% confidence interval = 2.02 to 30.9)
- note that it has been estimated that increasing screening participation by 10% could prevent 27 000 incident CRC diagnoses and 16 800 cancer deaths, and that an additional A$200 million expenditure could be saved over the next 20 years in the Australian population
- study authors concluded:
- SMS intervention increased NBCSP kit return in 50–60-year-old patients in general practice
Reference:
- McIntosh JG et al. Increasing bowel cancer screening using SMS in general practice: the SMARTscreen cluster randomised trial. British Journal of General Practice 18 March 2024; BJGP.2023.0230. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2023.0230