SMS Diabetes Education

Empowering effective lifetime self-management of Type 1 diabetes (T1D) and cardiovascular risk factors is critical in preventing diabetes-related complications. This includes eating a healthy diet, engaging in exercise, taking appropriate amounts of insulin, self-monitoring blood glucose, practicing good dental hygiene, managing mental health and keeping up to date with the rapidly evolving landscape of therapeutics, technology, subsidies and nutritional advice.

In general, Australian’s have access to high-quality education programs from multidisciplinary experts across primary and secondary care and allied health. However, these resources are largely concentrated in metropolitan areas with remote, rural and regional patients experiencing considerable disparity in terms of health service availability.

Medical education programs via text messaging have been shown to reduce the incidence of complications in adults with poorly controlled diabetes and those at high risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), however, appear less effective in medium-risk patients. This may be due to factors such as the lack of detail afforded by SMS as a medium or insufficient tailoring of education material to individual patients.

Our intervention study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a next-generation mobile messaging education service against standard SMS-delivered media across 4 sites: St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, Royal North Shore Hospital NSW,  Launceston Medical Centre and Goulburn Valley Health, Shepparton.