Increasing rates of reported sexually transmitted infections (STIs) remain a major public health challenge worldwide. Despite active and passive surveillance activities and multiple interventions aimed at increasing case finding and treatment, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), chlamydia (CT), gonorrhea (GC), syphilis, herpes, and human papillomavirus (HPV) infections impose a large burden on health resources [
1,
2].
In the past two decades, the population use of new technologies such as mobile phones and the internet has exploded. The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association figures showed that almost 27 million Canadians, representing more than 81% of the Canadian population, subscribed to mobile phones in 2012 [
3]. Of those who own smart phones in Canada, according to Rogers Communications survey in 2012, text messaging was noted to be the top application (88% users) [
4]. Furthermore, a Statistics Canada 2010 survey revealed that 78% of Canadian have a cell phone, and wireless-only homes increased to 13% from 8% in 2008 [
5].
Text messaging is commonly used in a variety of medical contexts. Text messaging allows patients and providers to ‘interact’ via two-way communication [
6], which can allow for enhanced support by health-care providers to confirm medication taking [
7,
8], to enable patients to ask medication questions to pharmacists [
9], and to alert clinic staff of problems [
10]. SMS messages 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 [
11]. Moreover, because messages exchanged between health-care providers and clients are stored on the device, there is the potential for them to become part of the client’s health-care record.
SMS has been used in other health contexts in the form of smoking cessation [
12‐
14], cancer [
15], diabetes [
16‐
23], asthma [
24‐
34], diet or weight management [
35], obesity [
36], and reminder programs [
37‐
43]. In the context of sexual health services, SMS has been used in the form of appointment reminders [
44,
45], STI rescreening reminders [
46,
47], provision of STI results [
48‐
51], communication of STI information [
10,
52], sexual health promotion [
53,
54], and assistance with contact-tracing [
55‐
58]. It has also been shown to decrease the amount of time from diagnosis to treatment among positive chlamydia patients [
49], increase the rate of retesting among high risk groups [
59], and reduce the amount of missed clinic appointments [
10,
44]. Others report that sexual health knowledge and behavior is increased by delivering educational messages via text message [
53,
54]. Because younger people have higher risk of acquiring STIs such as GC and CT, text messaging, which is commonly used by this segment of the population, can be an effective tool to reach and help them in STI management and care. Today, text messaging and email managed on handheld devices are overtaking traditional voice calling for personal communication in Europe and North America. However, despite widespread use, there is little consensus about the actual impact that SMS interventions have on the prevention and control of STIs. The purpose of this systematic review is to examine the use of SMS to improve the treatment and prevention of STIs. Our research will attempt to answer the following questions: (a) What are the various ways that SMS use has been proposed to improve STI prevention and management in quantitative studies with control groups? (b) What are the potential benefits and harms for participants of SMS interventions related to STI programs? (c) What are the experiences and perceptions of people involved in STI-related SMS interventions? and (d) Why does an intervention work (or not), for whom, and in what circumstances?