The Effect on Attendance of an SMS Notification Prior to a Scheduled Screening Appointment in BreastScreen Norway

Norwegian Institute of Public Health

Status: Completed

Conditions: Attendance; Breast Cancer Screening

Treatments: Other: SMS notification

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT07355569

5158-5158

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study has been designed as a randomized controlled trial including women invited to a national screening program for breast cancer in Norway, BreastScreen Norway in 2025. The program invites women aged 50-69 to biennial screening mammography. The study includes two substudies with the intervention of sending an SMS notification three days prior to the screening appointment in the first substudy and two days prior to the screening appointment in second study. The comparison is made between the study groups, where women are sent an SMS notification two or three days prior to their scheduled screening appointment and the control groups where women will not be sent an SMS notification about a scheduled screening appointment.

Enrollment: 133,770 patients

Sex: Female

Ages: 50 to 71 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• women invited to BreastScreen Norway residing in the South-Eastern, Central, and Northern Norway Regional Health Authorities

Exclusion criteria

• no

Trial design

Primary purpose: Screening

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

133,770 participants in 2 patient groups

Study group

Experimental group

Description:

The intervention was an SMS notification sent before the scheduled appointment for mammographic screening. Women in the study group was linked to the Common Contact Register in Norway (CCRN) to obtain phone numbers for sending SMS notification prior to the scheduled appointment. Phone numbers are registered in CCRN when users log into public online services through an electronic ID. Inclusion in this registry is voluntary. The personal identification number of the women in the study group was used to obtain their phone number. In study group 1 women were linked to the CCRN and those registered were sent an SMS notification three days prior to the scheduled routine screening appointment during January-March 2025. Women in study group 2 were sent an SMS notification two days prior to the scheduled routine screening appointment during April-June 2025.

Treatment:

Other: SMS notification

Control group

No Intervention group

Description:

Women in the control group did not receive any SMS notification before the scheduled appointment to mammographic screening. The women in the control group were not linked to the NCCR and were not available or sent an SMS notification during the study periods, January-March 2025 (control group 1) and women who were not sent an SMS notification during April-June 2025 (control group 2).