London pharmacies use SMS for stop smoking drive

Pharmacies in London are to use text messaging to launch a smoking cessation campaign and offer customers support to kick the habit.

The pharmacies will use iPLATO’s Patient Care Messaging for Pharmacies service to validate smoking status, invite “quitters” to smoking cessation services and “follow up” with them over a year.

They will also receive support to launch the service, which reflects pharmacies’ growing role in public health and the government’s emphasis on helping people to make healthy choices.

Salvador Castilla of iPLATO, said: “Increasingly, pharmacies are providing an additional outlet for a selection of services that are also provided by GP surgeries or central clinics.

“This has driven the adoption of approaches and tools that have been shown to successfully support similar services and initiatives elsewhere. Patient Care Messaging is already effectively supporting smoking cessation initiatives in GP surgeries; so we view this as a natural progression.”

A representative from one of the pharmacies said issues of data protection and privacy had been considered. “The primary care trust has developed guidelines to ensure patient safety that we adhere to.

“According to these guidelines, patients can opt out of the service at any time, simply by telling their pharmacist or any of their staff. We would encourage all our customers to hand in their mobile number so that we can reach them with this new service.”

iPLATO says pharmacies will be able to target patients with different conditions. Castilla said: “The two pharmacies participating in the project will utilise recorded client/patient contact details in order to target specific areas of the population, such as pregnant women, patients on chronic disease registers and the economically disadvantaged.

“Would-be ‘quitters’ can be efficiently identified, referred to stop smoking service clinics/support and subsequently followed up via motivational text messages and appointment reminders.”

iPLATO was founded in London in 1999. In 2003, it was awarded a grant by the Department of Trade and Industry to study the feasibility of sending appointment reminders by text message. Its Patient Care Messaging system is now used by 30 primary care trusts and a number of acute hospitals.

Tobias Alpsten, managing director of iPLATO, said: “This [project] will enable pharmacies to better serve their communities and improve their businesses. In the first stage, we aim to enable targeted smoking cessation campaigns.

“In the future, we expect to grow the platform to automated services such as repeat prescription and medication reminders. We hope to create revenue share based partnerships with pharmacy management systems to achieve this goal.”

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