As the Text4Baby SMS service makes its first announcement of how many subscribers it’s drawing, Joel Selaniko asks is this what happens when “The Government does Technology?”
Whilst I wouldn’t be so quick to write off the White House (Obama did use mobiles to win his election!) I wasn’t hopeful that the “broadcast” design elements of this solution would achieve much more than could be achieved by mandating Health Information to be inserted into the packaging of baby foods or diapers/nappies.
But… the numbers aren’t that bad. For example they’re already 20 times greater than the number of downloads the average “paid for app” gets on the Apple App Store. It’s also quite amazing IF this will lead to information getting to the 4% of mothers who have the greatest need for information through their mobile phones eg. those from disadvantaged and under represented backgrounds who don’t have internet connectivity at home, speak English etc etc.
Yes it’s fine to suggest that this could all be done by a simple Facebook group that would take 5 minutes to set up but what if your target audience doesn’t have reliable access to the internet? What about a patient’s right to privacy?
I can see an enormous need for a secure and private place for new mothers to ask questions, and just hope this project steps up a gear and starts doing more to take advantage of the unique attributes of mobile.
UPDATE: Over at the DataDyne Staff Blog, Joel pointed out a rather nonsensical part of this post where I compare the subscribers to Text4Baby with the average number of people who are paying for iPhone Apps. Whilst in the context of this single post this is a bit confusing I have included it in light of the huge media coverage that the iPhone App Store “success story” is generating AND in light of the fact that some Government mHealth initiatives are already using the App Store to try and serve patients (before they’ve properly utilised more accessible SMS, MMS, Mobile Web or Java Games) …I’d wrongly assumed that regular readers of my blog would know that
This is a fair criticism to be sure. A lot of money (probably too much) went into developing the program and it’s a good one. Unfortunately the money does not seem to be there for promotion. Of course they should do a better job but this is a great place for us to step in and promote the service ourselves. If we all do our part to promote this great service instead of criticizing it, maybe those numbers will be more impressive. You have a great soap box to speak from, maybe you should use it?
Full disclosure: I used to work for the company that developed text4baby and while I may not agree with some aspects of how it came to be, the program is a good one.
I totally agree with you that the project has lots of implications for improving public health. I think that they need to look more into the health literacy of their messages as they have the potential to reach young rural minority women.