Thakkar et al. (2016) conducted a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials to assess the effect of mobile telephone text messaging on medication adherence in chronic disease. Mobile phone text messaging approximately doubles the
odds of medication adherence. This increase translates into adherence rates improving from 50% (assuming this baseline rate in patients with chronic disease) to 67.8%, or an absolute increase of 17.8%. While promising, these results should be interpreted with caution given the short duration of trials and reliance on self-reported medication adherence measures.