Mobile.net: Mobile telephone text messages to encourage adherence to medication and to follow up with people with psychosis: Methods and protocol for a multicenter randomized controlled two-armed trial

Abstract

Background: Schizophrenia is a high-cost, chronic, serious mental illness. There is a clear need to improve treatments and expand access to care for persons with schizophrenia, but simple, tailored interventions are missing. Objective: To evaluate the impact of tailored mobile telephone text messages to encourage adherence to medication and to follow up with people with psychosis at 12 months. Methods: Mobile.Net is a pragmatic randomized trial with inpatient psychiatric wards allocated to two parallel arms. The trial will include 24 sites and 45 psychiatric hospital wards providing inpatient care in Finland. The participants will be adult patients aged 18-65 years, of either sex, with antipsychotic medication (Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical classification 2011) on discharge from a psychiatric hospital, who have a mobile phone, are able to use the Finnish language, and are able to give written informed consent to participate in the study. The intervention group will receive semiautomatic system (short message service [SMS]) messages after they have been discharged from the psychiatric hospital. Patients will choose the form, content, timing, and frequency of the SMS messages related to their medication, keeping appointments, and other daily care. SMS messages will continue to the end of the study period (12 months) or until participants no longer want to receive the messages. Patients will be encouraged to contact researchers if they feel that they need to adjust the message in any way. At all times, both groups will receive usual care at the discretion of their team (psychiatry and nursing). The primary outcomes are service use and healthy days by 12 months based on routine data (admission to a psychiatric hospital, time to next hospitalization, time in hospital during this year, and healthy days). The secondary outcomes are service use, coercive measures, medication, adverse events, satisfaction with care, the intervention, and the trial, social functioning, and economic factors. Data will be collected 12 months after baseline. The outcomes are based on the national health registers and patients' subjective evaluations. The primary analysis will be by intention-to-treat.