This week, the Cochrane Library published a review of mobile messaging-based smoking cessation interventions. The report found that, based on five studies, with a total of more than 9,000 participants, smokers who used mobile messaging interventions were twice as likely to make it six months without smoking than those who didn’t.
“We can’t say from the result that this means all text messaging cessation programs work, but we can say these studies have shown that they can work,” said Robyn Whittaker, the lead author of the review from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. She told MobiHealthNews that of the five studies looked at, three were pure text messaging interventions, one incorporated text messaging and use of a website, and one used both text and video messaging. In the mixed studies, the Cochrane review looked at the texting intervention specifically. Although not all of the five studies were conclusive, the meta-analysis of the five showed significant results, according to Whittaker.
Read more on MobiHealthNews.