Beyond Medical Informatics

Here’s 2 bits of news about texting in healthcare:

Text4baby receives high grades

Surveyed participants in text4baby, a health information text messaging service for pregnant women and mothers of newborn infants, reported high levels of user satisfaction, according to researchers from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and the National Latino Research Center (NLRC).

…

Additionally, 63 percent of respondents reported that text4baby reminded them of an appointment or the need for an immunization; 75 percent reported that text4baby informed them of medical warning signs that they’d been unaware of; and 71 percent reported speaking to a physician about a topic they learned of through text4baby.

This is great use of texting for consumer health IT purposes. The text4baby site is here.

However…

Joint Commission- Doc ordering via text is unacceptable

Here’s the original post at the Joint Commission site.

Is it acceptable for physicians and licensed independent practitioners (and other practitioners allowed to write orders) to text orders for patients to the hospital or other healthcare setting?

No it is not acceptable for physicians or licensed independent practitioners to text orders for patients to the hospital or other healthcare setting. This method provides no ability to verify the identity of the person sending the text and there is no way to keep the original message as validation of what is entered into the medical record.

I know this practice is somewhat common here in the Philippines.

What do you think?