BANDAIDS – ‘e-TIPS’: Electronic message-driven patient education program for heart failure best practice care.

Participants will receive personalised weekly educational messages (‘e-TIPs’), delivered as a text-message (i.e. Short Message Service, SMS) to the participants’ mobile phones. Each electronic message will contain a ‘short-form’ tip along with a link to the online patient education application which contains more detailed information and links to external references. e-TIPs will be drawn from an e-TIPs bank, and randomly selected from key topic streams such as diet, exercise, medication management and then semi- customised to match the participant’s relevant clinical criteria. Participants will receive one to four e-TIPs per week, sent at random times between 9 am and 5 pm during weekdays, for 24 weeks (6 months). Messages will be unidirectional, that is, participants will not be encouraged to respond to the messages. Where a return message is received, an automatic reply will be sent informing the participant that the line is unmonitored and to contact their local heart failure nurse for enquires. Aggregated metrics, not linked to participants’ records, will be collected on which tips, topics and external references are clicked. At the end of the 24 week e-tip program, participants will be invited to conduct a post-trial interview. These will semi-structured interviews based on the Ethics approved topic guide. Interviews will be conducted by expert qualitative BANDAIDS investigators who do not have any access to the participant's clinical records or care. The interviews will last about 30 minutes using a snow-ball sampling approach. Interviews will be recorded for the purposes of transcribing, then records maintained in accordance with relevant privacy laws.