Text4baby is a mobile health (or mHealth) education programme sending free text-messages to women who are pregnant or have a young infant, that was launched in February 2010. The programme is a public–private partnership supported by a number of industry and public sector partners that include government agencies, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, corporations, academic institutions, professional associations and non-profit organizations. By covering all of USA and now spreading into other countries, such as Russia, it is the largest scale up of an mHealth intervention globally. In an article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Michelle Van Velthoven and colleagues concluded that As the first national programme of its kind, text4baby should be rigorously evaluated to ensure that pregnant women and their babies benefit from the programme, and that the programme truly becomes a role model for public–private partnerships in mHealth.
NHS budgets are under considerable pressure. It is therefore unsurprising that many NHS Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) In England will aim to prioritise price in contract awards, But this approach is a significant threat to community-centred healthcare. While competitive tendering is a legally required, an excessive focus on costs in awarding NHS contracts risks overshadowing key factors such as established community trust, local expertise, and the long-term impact on continuity of care. This shift towards cheaper, often external, commercial providers threatens to cut the links between communities and their local health services. The argument that competitive tendering is solely about legal compliance, and not cost, is undermined by the very nature of such tendering, which by design encourages the lowest bid. This approach risks eroding the social fabric of local healthcare provision, where established relationships and understanding of specific community needs are essential. Establishe...
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