The majority of reminder systems are inflexible; reminders are issued at static, prespecified times. To be effective, cognitive orthotics should reason about what reminders should be issued and when. This paper describes the personalized cognitive orthotic (PCO), a system that uses plan-based reasoning to attain flexibility. PCO relies on local search techniques to generate high-quality reminde...

This paper presents a study of the effect of one instance of contextual cues, trajectory reminders, on the recollection of location sharing preferences elicited using a retrospective protocol. Trajectory reminders are user interface elements that indicate for a particular location of a person’s trail across a city the locations visited before and after. The results of the study show that remind...

Despite the effective use of computerized clinical summaries and reminders in high-income countries to increase the quality of care, the difficulties of implementing and deploying such systems in lowincome countries have hindered their adoption. To become viable in these settings, clinical summaries and reminders systems must reliably deliver information while enabling healthcare providers to e...

OBJECTIVE To assess the effect of telephone reminders on repeat screening mammogram completion among women who have already had one or more mammograms. METHODS Seven hundred and forty women whose turn came for further mammography and who could be reached by telephone out of 1,372 women registered at a Cancer Screening and Education Center (CSEC) were studied in Erzurum, Turkey, from January t...

We present the results of an experiment that (a) shows the usefulness of screening out drop-outs and (b) tests whether different methods of payment and reminder intervals affect charitable giving. Following a lab session, participants could make online donations to charity for a total duration of three months. Our procedure justifying the exclusion of drop-outs consists in requiring participant...

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most frequently diagnosed sexually transmitted infection in the United States. It is associated with the development of cervical, anal-genital, and oral-pharyngeal cancers. The rate of HPV infection among adolescents and young adults in the United States remains high, and completion rates of an HPV vaccine series remain low. At an urban pediatric clinic, adoles...

The authors examined the effectiveness of a novel behavior modification method for dysfunctional and impulsive habits, based on nonremovable reminders (NrRs). NrRs were implemented by having participants wear nonremovable wristbands designated to constantly remind them of their resolution to quit the targeted habit (nail-biting). Participants were 80 nail-biters who resolved to quit. The NrR ap...

In this paper, we report on an experiment that tested users’ ability to understand the content of spoken auditory reminders. Users heard meeting reminders and medication reminders spoken in both a natural and a synthetic voice. Our results show that older users can understand synthetic speech as well as younger users provided that the prompt texts are well-designed, using familiar words and con...

BACKGROUND Non-attendance for hospital outpatient appointments is a significant problem in many countries. It causes suboptimal use of clinical and administrative staff and financial losses, as well as longer waiting times. The use of Short Message Service (SMS) appointment reminders potentially offers a cost-effective and time-efficient strategy to decrease non-attendance and so improve the ef...