Adoption of SMS for Health Adherence: A Consumer Perspective

This study is an empirical exploration of user perceptions of the use of wireless text messaging, or short messaging service (SMS), on cell phones as a health adherence-improvement initiative. Insufficient adherence, or non-compliance, is a major obstacle in health self-management programs. Using SMS to improve adherence is an innovative ecommerce application involving many unknowns. Of these, this study investigates a key issue from a user-centric perspective: what are the main reasons for consumers to adopt or resist the use of SMS for adherence? Results show user perceptions followed by technology features to be the most important motivations both for and against SMS use for this purpose.