Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments.

Missed appointments are a major cause of inefficiency in healthcare delivery, with substantial monetary costs for the health system, leading to delays in diagnosis and appropriate treatment. Patients' forgetfulness is one of the main reasons for missed appointments, and reminders may help alleviate this problem. Modes of communicating reminders for appointments to patients include face-to-face communication, postal messages, calls to landlines or mobile phones, and mobile phone messaging. Mobile phone messaging applications such as Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS) could provide an important, inexpensive delivery medium for reminders for healthcare appointments.