When the Government Does Technology, part II

When the Government Does Technology, part II

Last month I noted the launch of the Text4Baby SMS service to educate moms and moms-to-be with skepticism:

As a pediatrician I am pretty strongly committed to the health of moms and babies, but to me this program is exactly what we don't need: an million-dollar custom-built system to send text messages on one particular topic.

Well, it seems to get worse: despite having the blessing of the White House and CDC, and a prominent list of partners including:

Johnson & Johnson, MTV, CTIA, Healthy Mothers Health Babies Coalition, West Virginia Perinatal Partnership, Health Department of Northwest Michigan, San Diego Coalition (co-chaired by San Diego Medical Society Foundation and Alliance Healthcare Foundation), Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota and Vanguard Health Systems

they have only managed to sign up 22,327 moms in 6 weeks.  That means that so far they've covered about 0.5% of the approximately 4.3 million births per year in the US (not accounting for multiple births, or for people signing up who aren't pregnant moms).

To be fair, it's only been 6 weeks, so if they can keep this up for 52 weeks they will have covered . . . 4% of births ((22327/6*52)/4317119). Leaving 96% without the presumed benefit of the program. Time to get a new communications team?  Time for someone to correct my math?

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Topic continued here.