Mobile phone-based interventions, such as nudges via text messages, helped improve lifestyle behaviours and discipline with medicine consumption, according to a study by the Indian Council of Medical Research, which found that sending people periodic reminders seemed to help them.
The SPRINT India trial, done under ICMR’s Indian Stroke Clinical Trial Network (INSTRuCT), a network of stroke-ready centres in India, is a one of its kind in developing countries, according to the country’s apex biomedical research organisation.
The trial’s intervention was a package composed of SMS text messages, health education videos and stroke prevention workbook for patients. The messages focused on encouraging people to control blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol, improve physical activity, eat healthy diet and regularly take medicines to prevent a stroke.
“SPRINT study is the first trial in India (and perhaps globally) to try to assess the role of an mHealth intervention in secondary prevention of stroke at such a large scale. It provides hope in improving lifestyle and medical complications leveraging technology in a resource-constrained setup,” said Meenakshi Sharma, Scientist-G, non-communicable diseases division, ICMR, in a statement.
The study was done across 31 stroke centres in India.
Patients who were subjected to these nudges seemed to be more likely to give up smoking or drinking (85% compared to 78% in those who were not part of the intervention) and more likely to have their medicines regularly (93.6% compared to 89.8%).
According to ICMR, the awareness material was systematically developed in 12 different regional languages.
“The events like stroke, heart attack and death did not differ between the two groups (5.5% vs 4.9%) at one year follow up. This may be because the follow up period was too short or study centres were stroke-ready centers, which were already providing good quality of care to stroke patients. The findings of SPRINT India trial have a long-term benefit for patients who had a stroke through mobile health interventions,” said Dr Jeyaraj D Pandian, professor of neurology and principal, Christian Medical College, Ludhiana, who is the principal investigator of the clinical coordinating centre for the trial.
The results of the trial were published in the Lancet Global Health journal on last week.
