Mobile healthcare is the new avenue for the healthcare IT industry. Be it patients, physicians, providers, payers or hospitals, everyone wants to have the ease of accessing their work through their smartphones or mobile devices. As such, the need to have better and state-of-the-art information technology to deal with mobile healthcare not only increases, but it is almost becoming a prerequisite for any Electronic Health Record (EHR) vendor out there in the market.

One such vendor which is equipped to handle mobile healthcare is CureMD.

Text messaging is fast becoming a norm in healthcare. Patients and physicians heavily rely on text messaging to communicate with each other about scheduling, appointments, alerts, lab results, etc. But as mobile text messaging in healthcare increases, the need to establish best practices becomes all the more important. A patient would not want to receive a text message that he/she is unable to decipher or understand. Similarly, a poorly formatted text message with no punctuation will also be a nightmare for anyone and might convey the wrong message altogether.

So what are the best practices for text messaging in healthcare? Let’s take a look.

Statements or questions?

According to a recent survey, patients want to receive clear and grammatically correct statements in text messages from their healthcare providers. They are not very interested in receiving messages which ask questions or are poorly formatted, as they can be difficult to answer in the manner intended by the sender. Effective mobile device management is essential to ensure that these communications are both clear and well-structured.

Emoticons or just words?

Will it be okay for a physician to communicate with a patient using emoticons in a text message? Will it be considered unprofessional? Some might argue that they should be avoided. However, as the study finds, patients are okay receiving emoticons as long as they express happiness.

CAPS or no caps?

In the world of text messaging, using caps to express something generally implies importance, anger or shouting. However, patients prefer receiving clinical updates, alerts or reminders in caps as it signifies importance, as per the research.

These are some of the best practices for mobile text messaging in the healthcare industry, which will only become more significant as the industry continues to revolutionize.