ArticleJournal of public health in Africa2023
Assessing the cost and utilization of SMS printers by primary health care facilities: lessons learned from South Africa.
Article in Journal of public health in Africa, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Assessing laboratory specimen losses for the city of Johannesburg, South Africa.African journal of primary health care & family medicine · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Historically, paper-based laboratory reports were delivered by couriers to health facilities resulting in post-analytical delays. As a result, short message service (SMS) printers were deployed to fill this gap, with the global data service platform (GDSP) being primarily used to facilitate deployment. In addition, these printers generate binary and quantitative information that can be used to assess utilization. Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the costs and utilization of the SMS printer program in South Africa. Methods: A cost analysis for 2020 was undertaken. We determined annual equivalent costs (AEC) for staffing, printers, fixed costs related to the national coordinator, consumables, travel costs, database support/hosting/dashboard development, printer repairs, and results transmission. The main outcome of interest was the cost per SMS printer result delivered. Data were extracted to assess utilization as follows: i) months active (based on internet protocol data); ii) signal; iii) battery strength. Results: There were 4,450,116 results delivered to printers that were situated at 2232 primary health care facilities. An AEC of $687,727 was reported, with a cost per result delivered of $0.1618. The SMS printers contributed 73.52% to the total AEC. Overall, 90% of the printers were GDSP based, of which only 69.5% were determined to be active. The majority of active printers reported a signal strength of ≥60% and a battery strength of ≥6 volts. Conclusion: Although the SMS printer program has the potential to reduce post-analytical delays, pathology services should migrate to an end-to-end electronic interface to improve patient care.
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