• Heart Disease

It has been challenging to develop effective interventions to increase the number of people engaged in heart healthy behaviours. We all look at our phones all the time; text messaging offers a simple way to reach our patients one on one. Burn and colleagues1 used a Markov model, based on a previous randomised trial and meta-analysis, to evaluate the effect of a simple text messaging programme for secondary prevention of adverse cardiovascular disease (CVD) events and improvement in quality adjusted life years (QALYs) in patients with known coronary artery disease (CAD). The programme, called TEXT ME, consists of 4 weekly text messages for 6 months with message content targeted to each participant’s baseline cardiac risk factor profile across the domains of general health and medication adherence, diet, exercise, and smoking cessation. (figure 1). Overall, the TEXT ME programme was estimated to result in 563 fewer myocardial infarctions, 361 fewer strokes and 1143 additional QALYs in a target population of 50 thousand CAD patients. Cost savings would be substantial, given that the text messaging programme is quite inexpensive.