Standard digital onboarding fails in markets with low digital literacy. Remedial Health drove a 32% adoption increase by replacing typical in-app guides with hands-on user training and localizing their app into regional languages, directly addressing user capabilities and cultural context.

Traditional trial recruitment methods like phone calls or emails often favor desk workers and higher socioeconomic demographics. Text messaging provides a more equitable channel, as mobile phone and SMS usage for internet access dominates in lower socioeconomic quartiles, reaching a broader, more representative patient population.

Despite high costs and compliance hurdles, SMS can be a massive revenue stream, akin to email marketing 15 years ago. MarketBeat successfully leverages it for offers, finding a phone number is 5-10x more valuable than an email address.

Simple text reminders for medication adherence are common. The real opportunity is using two-way, AI-powered texting to create conversations that uncover the specific reasons (out of over 250 identified) why a patient might stop taking their medication, allowing for timely and personalized interventions.

The friction of navigating insurance and pharmacies is so high that chronic disease patients often give up, skipping tests or medications and directly worsening their health. AI can automate these tedious tasks, removing the barriers that lead to non-compliance and poor health outcomes.

Counterintuitively, SMS marketing is becoming the preferred channel for complex, multi-step sales like insurance, solar, and real estate. These industries require relationship-building and drip messaging over time, a process that sales-tech platforms are now automating effectively via text message.

The massive abandonment rate of health apps stems from a core design flaw: they are built to achieve company objectives (e.g., increase diagnosis) rather than integrating into patients' and doctors' existing workflows and behaviors, making them burdensome to use.

Simply patching existing Electronic Health Records is insufficient. The next generation must be architected from the ground up with three core principles: offline functionality for resilience, a mobile-native experience, and generative AI at their core.

The asynchronous nature of texting is a key advantage for patient support programs. Unlike a phone call that demands an immediate response and can lead to a frustrating busy signal, texting allows patients to engage on their own time. This low-pressure interaction model significantly reduces barriers and encourages more people to reach out.