Mobile phones have been identified as one of the technologies that can be used to overcome the challenges of information dissemination regarding serious diseases. Short message services, a much used function of cell phones, for example, can be turned into a major tool for accessing databases. This paper focuses on the design and development of a short message services-based information access algorithm to carefully screen information on human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome within the context of a frequently asked questions system. However, automating the short message services-based information search and retrieval poses significant challenges because of the inherent noise in its communications. The developed algorithm was used to retrieve the best-ranked question–answer pair. Results were evaluated using three metrics: average precision, recall and computational time. The retrieval efficacy was measured and it was confirmed that there was a significant improvement in the results of the proposed algorithm when compared with similar retrieval algorithms
