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Prediction of crop yields is very helpful in ensuring food security, planning harvest management (storage, transport, and labor), and performing market planning. However, in Tanzania, where a majority of the population depends on crop farming as a primary economic activity, the digital tools for predicting crop yields are not yet available, especially at the grass-roots level. In this study, we developed and evaluated Maize Yield Prediction System (MYPS) that uses a short message service (SMS) and the Web to allow rural farmers (via SMS on mobile phones) and government officials (via Web browsers) to predict district-level end-of-season maize yields in Tanzania. The system uses LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) deep learning models to forecast district-level season-end maize yields from remote sensing data (NDVI on the Terra MODIS satellite) and climate data [maximum temperature, minimum temperature, soil moisture, and precipitation (rainfall)]. The key findings reveal that our unimodal and bimodal deep learning models are very effective in predicting crop yields, achieving mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) scores of 3.656% and 6.648%, respectively, on test (unseen) data. This system will help rural farmers and the government in Tanzania make critical decisions to prevent hunger and plan better harvesting and marketing of crops.

Crop protection information, such as how to control emergent and outbreak crop diseases and pests, as well as the latest research, regulations, and quality control measures for pesticides and fertilizers, is important to farmers. Rural smallholder farmers in Tanzania have traditionally relied on government agricultural officers who visit them in their villages to provide this crop protection information. However, these officers are few and cannot reach all the farmers on time. This means that farmers fail to make critical farming decisions on time, which can lead to low crop productivity. In this study, we aim to provide farmers with reliable and instant crop protection information by developing a system based on the Short Message Service (SMS) and the Web. This system automatically replies to farmers’ requests for the latest crop protection information in the Swahili language through SMS on a mobile phone or a Web system. The findings reveal that our proposed system can provide farmers with crop protection information at lower cost (500 times cheaper) than the existing Tigo Kilimo system. Furthermore, our proposed system’s deep learning model is effective in understanding and processing Swahili natural language SMS queries for crop protection information with an accuracy of 96.43%. This crop protection information will help farmers make better critical farming decisions on time and improve crop productivity.

Background Stroke remains a leading cause of long-term disability and mortality worldwide, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where suboptimal management of modifiable risk factors such as hypertension and diabetes mellitus are prevalent. Poor medication adherence, a critical barrier to effective risk management, is widespread in Nigeria, with adherence rates below 50% in patients with chronic illnesses. This study evaluates the efficacy of a 12-week short message service (SMS)-based intervention in improving medication adherence, knowledge, and prevention practices among hypertensive and diabetic patients attending the Medical Outpatient Clinic at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria. Methodology A single-center randomized controlled trial was conducted with 150 participants aged 18 years and above and had a documented clinical diagnosis of hypertension and/or diabetes mellitus and currently being treated with a prescribed medication. The intervention group received bi-daily SMS reminders on medication adherence, lifestyle modifications, and stroke prevention, alongside standard care. The control group received standard care only. Outcomes assessed included change in medication adherence, knowledge, stroke prevention practices, and quality of life. A p  value of 0.05 was used. Result The prevalence of hypertension and diabetes were 90.0% and 20.7% respectively; 16 individuals (10.7%) had comorbidity of hypertension and diabetes. There was a 14.7% increase in the proportion of participants with a high medication adherence in the intervention arm whereas the control arm had a 2.7% increase. This 5 times relative increase in proportion was however not statistically significant. The study showed a significant effect of the intervention on participants knowledge of stroke prevention (t = 3.339, p  = 0.001). There was no significant impact of the intervention on self-rated health scores (t = 0.132; p  = 0.896). Conclusion The SMS intervention significantly improved stroke prevention knowledge and showed a non-significant trend towards better medication adherence. Baseline motivational and cultural factors likely influenced outcomes, underscoring the need to address behavioral, cultural and economic barriers. This scalable telehealth model warrants further exploration to optimize adherence in resource-limited settings. Clinical trial registration This study was registered on the 25th July and approved on 25th of August 2023 by the Pan African Clinical Trials Registry (PACTR) with unique identification number: PACTR202308767234235. The findings from this study are presented in accordance with the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement.

Adherence to oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is challenging, and cellular technology offers a promising opportunity for support. However, a recent randomized controlled trial found that SMS reminders did not improve PrEP adherence. We used qualitative methods to explore the trial participants’ experiences with the SMS intervention. We conducted serial in-depth interviews with 54 young Kenyan women, using inductive and deductive content analysis . Initially, SMS reminders were highly acceptable. Participants expressed enthusiasm with receiving the reminders because of the coded nature of the SMS reminders; they also helped in ‘habit forming’ with daily adherence. However, overtime, participants reported growing concerns about privacy, self-efficacy, and responsibility and SMS fatigue. Participants also reported other challenges, including phone loss, poor telephone network, and lack of electricity. Further research to explore if SMS reminders in alternative formats or with different frequency is needed, in addition to identification of alternate adherence support strategies.

BackgroundMany outpatients with functional dyspepsia (FD) do not follow the medication schedule recommendations, which can lead to illness relapse.ObjectiveTo investigate whether short message service (SMS) reminders improve medication regimen adherence and therapeutic efficacy in outpatients with FD.DesignParticipants with FD were randomly allocated to the control group or intervention group. Patients in the control group received a 4-week medication treatment with no reminders, those in the intervention group received medication treatment plus a daily SMS reminder of dose and medication time.ParticipantsNewly diagnosed FD patients from April 2019 to June 2019 were recruited from the GI outpatient clinics at Renji Hospital.MeasurementsThe scores for FD symptoms (LDQ) and psychological conditions (PHQ-9 for depression and GAD-7 for anxiety) were assessed before and after the treatment. The medication possession ratio (MPR) was calculated.Key ResultsA total of 352 eligible patients was enrolled in the study. The overall compliance rates of patients in the intervention and control groups were 87.5% and 80.7% in the intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis (P = 0.08) and 94.48% and 86.59% in per-protocol (PP) analysis (P = 0.015), respectively. In the intervention group, the compliance rate of younger patients (age ≤ 40 years) was significantly higher than that of age-matched patients in the control group (ITT: 86.1% vs. 70.5%, P = 0.018). Compared with the control group, the reduction in scores of LDQ (9.33 vs. 8.02, P = 0.017), PHQ-9 (6.97 vs. 5.69, P = 0.004), and GAD-7 (8.70 vs.7.53, P = 0.028) was significantly greater in patients receiving SMS reminders. The MPR of patients positively correlated with the reduction in scores of LDQ, PHQ-9, and GAD-7 in both groups.ConclusionsSMS reminders can improve treatment compliance and efficacy in patients with FD.Trial RegistrationNCT04052750

An individual based randomized controlled trial (RCT) was designed to evaluate the impact of a customized short message service (SMS) intervention on HIV-related high-risk behaviors among Men who have sex with men (MSM). In total, 631 HIV-negative MSM were enrolled at baseline and divided into intervention and control groups randomly. Nine months later, the intervention group who received additional customized SMS intervention reported significantly lower rates of multiple partners, unclear partner infection status and condomless anal intercourse compared to the control group who received the routine intervention only. Six months post stopping the SMS intervention, the rates of unclear partner infection status and condomless anal intercourse still remained lower report in the intervention group. Our study shown that the customized SMS interventions can significantly reduce the HIV-related high-risk behaviors among MSM and with sustained effects over a period of time.

Retail traders rarely use rupiah values of less than one thousand rupiah. Moreover, the use of small money under one hundred rupiah is practically no longer used. From the buyer’s point of view, a reduction in the price of just one rupiah has been taken into account, especially in purchasing of a large quantity of goods, of course a slight reduction in price is very meaningful. This study aims to create a prototype electronic rupiah application in order to facilitate financial transactions, especially in the payment of goods’ prices with a value below one thousand rupiahs. The research method used is descriptive quantitative. The population of this study was all undergraduate students who visited the “Idaman” canteen at Sebelas Maret University with 32 respondents. The sampling technique used incidental random sampling, while the data analysis used was confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results showed that the application prototype of electronic rupiah needs to pay attention to three things, namely feature design, transaction design, and user account’s security design. Feature design is a basic view of display that needs to be made in such a way as to be attractive and easy to understand. Advanced display design is the details of the buttons on the basic view of menu display which contain transaction/arrangement designs. Account security design is a confirmation of account operation via email and data backup to anticipate if the internet connection is lost. Confirmation is used in making payments via password and or SMS (short message service). The details of these three designs will be discussed in this article.

Using data of 11526 residential postpaid subscribers of the German subsidiary of a multinational mobile network operator (MNO) extracted from the firm's customer and billing records, this investigation empirically examines the association between monthly mobile Internet (MI) data traffic volume generated by consumers and their monthly number of SMS sent at the within- and between-subjects levels over 25 months from October 2011 to October 2013. Multilevel analysis of the time-varying and -constant study variables suggests that, in spite of a sharp decrease in the average/median number of outgoing SMS in the course of the investigation period, customer heterogeneity with regard to the relationship between MI and SMS use intensities is very large. The number of customers with a negative with-person regression slope for MI data volume is almost as high as the number of consumers, whose slope is positive. Subscribers, who are most likely to reduce their SMS volume in parallel to an increase of their MI data traffic, are persons, who (1) are heavy SMS users in the initial study period (October 2011), (2) are female, (3) have a longer MNO tenure, (4) are currently in an SMS flat price scheme, (5) are presently equipped with an Apple iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy smartphone and (6) put their current handset into operation more recently. Implications of these findings for service-marketing strategies of MNO and for future research on demand interdependencies between relatively newly introduced and well-established mobile communications services are discussed.

Underreporting is the main limitation of spontaneous reporting systems. This cohort-event monitoring study aims to examine the potential of short message service (SMS)-based surveillance compared to traditional surveillance systems. Using VigiVax software, parents of vaccinated children aged two years or younger, in the period March 2021–May 2022, received a single SMS inquiry about adverse events following immunization (AEFI). Responses were collected, validated by health operators and integrated with the information on electronic immunization registries. AEFI reports were automatically submitted to the Italian Pharmacovigilance system. Among 254,160 SMS messages sent, corresponding to 451,656 administered doses (AD), 71,643 responses were collected (28.2% response rate), and 21,231 of them (8.3%) reported AEFI. After a seriousness assessment based on clinical criteria, 50 reports (0.24%) were classified as serious. Among these, a causality assessment identified 31 reports at least potentially related to the vaccination (RR: 6.86/100,000 AD). Febrile seizures following MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella, varicella) vaccination accounted for 11 of these 31 cases, with an incidence of 32 per 100,000 AD. No fatal outcomes were reported. Our findings support the highly favorable risk profile of pediatric vaccinations and the possibility to improve spontaneous reporting through the integration of digital technologies.

Patient contact by telephone the day before ambulatory surgery is considered as a best practice. The Short Message Service (SMS) could be a suitable alternative. The objective of this prospective study was to evaluate the interest of preoperative instruction (PI) reminders by SMS compared to telephone calls. This was a prospective single center before-and-after study. Patients scheduled in ambulatory surgery were included during 2 consecutive periods of 10 weeks. The “Call” group received a telephone call for preoperative instructions (PI) and the “SMS” group received an automated protocol SMS reminder. The primary endpoint was patient compliance with PI and time of convocation. The two populations were compared with a non-inferiority hypothesis and the impact of the contact modality on compliance with the PI was assessed using a propensity score. The analysis concerned 301 patients in the Call group and 298 in the SMS group. The absence of dysfunction was observed in 75% of patients in the SMS group compared with 61% in the Call group (Risk difference: 14% [95%CI: 7–21]). The use of SMS was associated with a significant improvement in compliance with the PI (Odds ratio: 1.90 [1.48–2.42]; p < 0.0001). Patient satisfaction was similar regardless of the method of PI reminders. The automation of preoperative SMS reminders is associated with a better respect of the PI compared to the conventional calling method. This PI reminder method satisfies the majority of patients and may have a favorable financial impact.