New service available for secure texting with prospective and current research participants

For just over a decade, the Life Span Institute has offered researchers fee-based access to REDCap for secure data collection and data management, including online surveys and emails for collecting data and managing communication with research subjects. Now LSI also offers an additional service for sending SMS messages (text messages) to study participants and related individuals through a platform called Mosio.

Mosio can be integrated directly into REDCap or can be used as a stand-alone communication tool. Like REDCap, Mosio conversation data is stored on HIPAA compliant servers in an encrypted format. It provides superior management of lab communications compared to using a KU-owned cell phone or personal cell phone, said platform administrator Lisa Hallberg, Research Database and Software Engineer in LSI’s Research Design and Analysis.

In practice, Mosio can be used as a communication tool embedded in REDCap for sending SMS messages in the same ways that REDCap can send emails. 

“For example, for study participants who provide a phone number, they can opt to receive survey invitations by SMS text message,” Hallberg said. “There’s an option to send alerts and notifications by text, too.”

Mosio can also be used as a stand-alone web interface for managing SMS text conversations with study participants. In this way, multiple team members can have logins to Mosio and can work together on scheduling visits with participants, for example.

Hallberg said that one LSI research team, the Adaptive Fitness team led by Lyndsie Koon, uses SMS to schedule testing visits with their participants. While they previously used personal cell phones to manage communications, with Mosio they now have a single phone number for their study, and a shared interface for managing communications. 

“The communications are now more secure,” Hallberg said, “and the operational management of the communication is distributed to the entire team, with less chance of missed signals between team members or participants.”

SMS messaging within REDCap is limited to a single project per phone number. The current internal project rate is $117 per year, which includes one SMS-enabled phone number, one Mosio login, and 3,600 SMS "segments": blocks of up to 160 simple characters. The number of segments used by each text message depends on the length of the message and the use of special characters, such as emojis. Additional blocks of 5,000 segments may be purchased for $99 each, and additional Mosio user logins are available for $3 per month.

For more information on adding Mosio to your project, reach out to RDA staff Lisa Hallberg or Ed Auer.