Hospital use of SMS for Appointment Reminders

Last night Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that if re-elected, the ALP government would provide $400M for online medical consultations. However, ICT does not need to be that complicated to be of value in improving the quality and efficiency of medical services. One example is that a few seconds ago I got a SMS message from Calvary Hospital in Canberra, reminding me of an appointment tomorrow. The message doesn't give any details of the appointment, apart from the day. But it has a phone number to call with questions.This is enough and avoids issues of privacy and accuracy of data.