The White House officially moved into the mobile phone health application business on Thursday when it unveiled a free texting service for use by expectant and new mothers.
With the program, at least three text messages can be sent weekly to pregnant women via cell phones—giving them friendly reminders appropriate to their stages of pregnancy on how to keep themselves healthy. The service continues through their babies' first year. The announcement was made by Aneesh Chopra, the White House chief technology officer, during the Health IT Government Leaders meeting in Washington, DC.
The Department of Health and Human Services actually will manage the program in partnership with private sector telecom carriers, Chopra said. The "Text4baby" program is designed to help support understanding about maternal and infant health issues in the U.S., which has "a higher infant mortality than other industrial countries," he said. The messages address such topics as nutrition, immunization, and birth defect prevention.
The goal behind this effort is to curb premature births, which can be caused by poor nutrition, excessive stress, smoking, and drinking alcohol. Roughly 500,000 babies are born prematurely in the U.S. annually, and 28,000 infants die before their first birthday, according to the Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, one of the campaign sponsors.
To use the program, women can text "baby"—or "bebe" in Spanish—and then 511411. The women will be automatically signed up for the messages at no cost. As of Thursday morning, after the service was mentioned the day before on the "Dr. Drew" television show, more than 3,400 people had already signed up, Chopra said.
Chopra added that this application can be seen as an example of the Obama administration's emphasis on collaboration with the private sector to promote information technology. He said the Text4baby service "represents an extraordinary opportunity" to expand the way "we use our phones—to demonstrate the potential of mobile health technology."
The partnership is made up of 15 telecom carriers, healthcare industry, insurance plans, and federal agencies, including the HHS and Defense departments and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Wireless carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, have agreed to waive all fees for receiving the texts. The U.S. program is being run by Voxiva.
Researchers at George Washington University evaluate the effectiveness of Text4baby by measuring health trends for mothers and newborns.
Janice Simmons is a senior editor and Washington, DC, correspondent for HealthLeaders Media Online. She can be reached at jsimmons@healthleadersmedia.com.