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Faced with a national 48-hour waiting time target and high non-attendance rates for booked appointments, our sexual health service sought patient preferences for appointment reminders. Questionnaires were distributed to 350 consecutive genitourinary medicine clinic attendees. Eighty-eight percent of respondents approved of appointment reminders, with text messaging being the preferred option. Automated voicemail reminders to mobile phones were acceptable to 84%. Patients would generally choose a voicemail reminder to their mobile phone as opposed to home or work phone, and this preference was more pronounced in younger patients ( P = 0.03). The majority of patients considered reminders two or three days in advance sufficient notice, with 98% owning a mobile phone. Text or voicemail reminders may significantly reduce non-attendance rates and their associated costs, improve accessibility and reduce waiting times.

The World Maritime University was ten years old on 4 July. During the last decade the University has evolved and developed, but its fundamentalism has remained the same – to provide training that cannot be gained elsewhere for the senior personnel who are primarily responsible for ensuring that IMO measures are implemented and enforced This article by the Rector looks at the present and the future of what is generally regarded as IMO's most successful project in the field of technical co-operation.