EHR Association Drives Support for Text4baby
The HIMSS Electronic Health Record Association (EHR Association), a collaboration of 42 EHR supplier companies, announced this week its support as an Implementation Partner of text4baby, the first free health text messaging service in the US focused on providing information to pregnant women and new mothers, launched by the National Healthy Mothers, Health Babies Coalition. (View the EHR Association Release Here)Text4baby supports expectant mothers by providing accurate, concise health information and resources in a format that is personal and timely, using text messaging, a widely adopted channel with over 72% of mobile phone users sending or receiving text messages.
“We’re pleased to support this initiative and encourage our members to offer their customers the option to add the text4baby link to their patient information printouts, appointment reminders, and other features of their EHR systems,” said Mark Segal, PhD, EHR Association past chair and member of the EHR Association Executive Committee and Vice President, Government and Industry Affairs, GE Healthcare IT.
The EHR Association counts among its member companies, EHR developers who serve multiple specialties and organizations (including community health centers and clinics) offering a connection to the majority of expectant mothers and their babies. “We believe we can have a real impact with the thousands of clinicians and providers supported by our members and the tens of thousands of patients they serve,” Segal concluded.
“This project has already had a real impact,” added Judy Meehan, CEO of National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, the programmatic host of text4baby. “We have more than 190,000 subscribers and over 500 public and private sector partners since the program was launched in 2010. With plans to expand the program and community reach through new partners like the EHR Association, we hope to engage many more partners with mutual goals and serve one million mothers by December 2012,” Meehan said.
Text4baby is the first free service to use weekly text messages to help pregnant women and new moms take care of their health and that of their baby. The tips and messages, which have been developed in collaboration with government and nonprofit health experts, deal with nutrition, immunization and birth defect prevention, among other topics. By incorporating information on the program to the increasing number of operational EHRs across the country, the EHR Association can help text4baby achieve its objective to see that more women have access to the information they need to have healthy pregnancies and get their babies off to a great start.
For a PDF version of this release, please click here.
About the HIMSS EHR Association
The EHR Association is a trade association of 42 electronic health record (EHR) companies that join together to lead the health IT industry in the accelerated adoption of electronic health records in hospital and ambulatory care settings in the US. The Association provides a leadership forum for the EHR software provider community to speak with a unified voice relative to standards development, the EHR certification process, interoperability, performance and quality measures, and other EHR issues as they become subject to increasing government, insurance and provider-driven initiatives and requests. Membership is open to HIMSS Corporate Members companies that design, develop and market their own EHRs. The Association is a partner of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and operates as an independent organizational unit within HIMSS. For more information, visit www.himssEHRA.org.
For more information, contact:
Elizabeth (Liddy) West, CPHIMS
(520) 730-8212 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.