Text Messaging a tool in e-Health services
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Date
2010
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Telkom
Abstract
HIV/AIDS continues to be a menace to the
global community, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and
South Africa is not an exception. The infection rate is
continues to grow, in particular, among the young adults.
Cell phones have been identified as one of the tools that
can be used to overcome the challenge of information
dissemination regarding HIV/AIDS among young adults
because of its acceptability within this age group. Access to
appropriate information can be a powerful for prevention
and management of many chronic illnesses, including
hypertension, diabetes and HIV/AIDS. Within the young
adults age group information access by use of Short
Messaging Services (SMS) becomes particularly appealing.
In this regard, it is proposed to provide access to carefully
screened information on HIV/AIDS within the context of
frequently asked questions (FAQ) system. However,
automating SMS-based information search and retrieval
poses significant challenges because of the inherent noise
in SMS communications. In the paper, a special corpus of
SMS messages was collected based on a standardised
question-answer collection. The SMS messages were then
analysed, transcribed and classified, with the aim of
building a dictionary of SMS-speak to English
translations, with reference to HIV/AIDS.
Description
Keywords
SMS Communication, Mobile Information Access, HIV/AIDS management
Citation
Adesina, A.O., Agbele, K.K. & Nyongesa, H.O. (2010). Text Messaging a tool in e-Health services. Proceedings of the Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference, 5-8 September, Stellenbosch, South Africa, pp: 1-15