Reaching patients and their partners through mobile: text messaging for case management and partner notification.

摘要

Approximately 83% of all US adults own a cell phone, and 23% of households have no landline phone service. Text messaging is increasingly popular with more than 61% of Americans sending text messages. By extension, mobile phones have become a means for finding sex partners. In response, sexually transmitted disease (STD) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention programs have used mobile phones and text messaging specifically, for clinical management, sexual health services, and health promotion efforts with positive results. There have also been case studies of individual patients using text messages to inform partners of an STD exposure, but the authors are unaware of any studies that specifically address the use of text messaging by disease intervention specialists (DIS) to perform partner notification. Recent field experiences, however, compel us to highlight the need for DIS to use mobile phones as an additional tool when conducting partner notification (txtPN). Increasingly, mobile phones may be the preferred or only means for reaching sex partners. Furthermore, health care providers and patients alike are finding these new technologies acceptable.