Delivering health by text

Chinese researchers have reported some success in using text messages to encourage smokers to quit, according to a Xinhua News Agency story.
The results of the study published on Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine showed that 6.5 percent of smokers who had received a 12-week, mobile-phone-based intervention had quit by the end of the study.
The researchers at the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University said the intervention could prove to be more feasible and to have greater reach than in-person treatments.
The intervention had great potential to improve population health and should be considered for large-scale use in China, the researchers added.
The study was conducted as a randomized controlled trial across China from August 2016 to May 2017, among 1,369 adult smokers.
Participants were randomly assigned to a 12-week intervention consisting of either high-frequency or low-frequency messaging, or to a control group that received text messages unrelated to quitting.
At the end of the trial, 6.5 percent of those in the high-frequency group, 6.0 percent of those in the low-frequency group and 1.9 percent of those in the control group had quit smoking.