There are many reasons that you might not have received your patient's inbound text message. Even when a message seems to have been delivered, there could have been other factors interfering. Here are some examples:
1. The patient who sent in the message did not have cell reception. There are some areas, depending on their location, that interferes with the delivery of a message to your Rhinogram account. As a solution, iPhones and Androids have an option to enable Wifi Calling. This will use wifi, if available, to deliver the message instead of cellular data.
2. The cell tower could be having an effect on the message. In low-coverage scenarios or when all voice channels are in use, you can often still get a text message out because it uses a different channel and only needs an intermittent connection to get the 160 characters out. However, any large messages over 160 characters might not be able to be delivered. To learn more about how messages larger than 160 characters are different, click here.
3. The device might not be updated or needs to be restarted. As an example, Apple regularly corrects small issues by releasing new updates to iOS. This could include problems with messaging. It’s always a good idea to keep your operating system up-to-date, at the very least as these fix security concerns.
4. Inclement weather is occurring. The most common type of weather most areas experience is heavy rain. The larger the drops, and the more of them there are, the more cell signal will be scattered. Rain can weaken cell signal more than any other weather.