Effectiveness of Mhealth to Increase Cervical Cancer Screening: Systematic Review of Interventions

Abstract

Background: Estimated one million-plus women worldwide are currently living with cervical cancer. Many of them have not any access to health services for prevention, curative treatment or palliative care. Cervical cancer is a consequence of a long-term infection with human papillomavirus (HPV), and the majority of cervical cancer cases (>80%) are currently found in low-and middle-income countries. In fact, an increasing body of literature indicates that HIV-positive women have an increased risk of developing cervical cancer in comparison with their HIV-negative counterparts. Cervical cancer is most notable in the lower-resource countries of sub-Saharan Africa as the result of the highest incidence of HIV-infected women.Pilot mHealth projects have shown that, particularly in developing countries, mobiles phones improve communication and information-delivery and informationretrieval processes over vast distances between healthcare service providers and patients. Mobiles phones provide remote access to healthcare facilities, facilitate trainings for, and consultations among health workers, and allow for remote monitoring and surveillance to improve public health programs awareness. mHealth interventions can potentially influence health-related behavior (and, in turn, health outcomes) via effecting changes in mediators of behavior change such as knowledge, attitudes, community peer norms, beliefs and self-efficacy. SMS can be customized to fit the needs of specific individuals by delivering tailored messages that are more likely to catch the individual's attention and be perceived as personally relevant and interesting.This systematic review will investigate whether mHealth interventions could improve cancer screening uptake in risk women. Objectives:To assess the effectiveness of different mHeath (SMS, calls, letters and emails reminders) interventions to improving cervical cancer screening in risk women.

Social Media and mHealth Technology for Cancer Screening: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

“…Two systematic reviews on this topic were published in 2017 [ 17 , 18 ]. Uy et al [ 17 ] evaluated the effectiveness of text messaging interventions on cancer screening and identified nine studies that met the inclusion criteria.…”

“…The authors concluded that text messaging interventions moderately increased screening rates for breast and cervical cancer; however, additional research is needed to better quantify this relationship [ 17 ]. Tamuzi et al [ 18 ] explored mHealth interventions for cervical cancer screening only. Their review identified 17 studies, and the authors were able to perform a meta-analysis on the results by type of intervention [ 18 ].…”

“…However, screening participation remains suboptimal across jurisdictions and cancer types [13][14][15][16]. Emerging research has explored the use of social media and mHealth for cancer screening [17][18][19][20][21]. However, we currently lack an understanding of how effective mHealth and social media can be for cancer screening participation.…”

Social media and mobile health technology for cancer screening: a systematic review and meta-analysis protocol

“…The proposed systematic review will report on the effectiveness of social media and mHealth interventions on cancer screening participation and intention and will be inclusive of breast, cervical, colorectal, lung and prostate cancer. Reviews to date on this topic are commonly limited to one particular intervention or one particular cancer 26 27. For example, a recent systematic review published by Uy et al 26 reports on the effect of solely text messaging interventions for cancer screening participation.…”

“…A recent systematic review on health behaviour change interventions that use online social networks found that of the 10 studies included in the review, four showed significant improvements in some aspect of health behaviour change (weight loss, physical activity or dietary awareness) 21. Systematic reviews specifically reporting on cancer screening have been limited to only one type of intervention (eg, text messaging)26 or only to one particular cancer 27. No systematic review exists to our knowledge comparing the effectiveness of both social media and mHealth interventions on cancer screening participation or intention.…”