Increasing the Take-up of Public Health Services: Evidence from a Digital-Health Field Experiment in Uruguay

In this paper we test whether the promotion of digital government tools and the provision of behaviorally-informed messages increases take-up of medical visits for cervical cancer screening. Using a multi-arm field experiment at scale in Uruguay, and administrative records from national health services, we find that the intervention more than doubled medical appointments and attendance rates over a 12-week period. Most of the effects are driven by women encouraged to use digital government tools on top of behaviorally oriented messages. These women attended the screening appointments about 3 times more than the control group, while those motivated only with messages attended 1.5 times more. Our results highlight the potential of investing in digital government tools to decrease transactions costs and improve the take-up of public services.

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