Since September 1, 2018, I have been at DirectTrust as President and CEO - and the time has flown by.
As I take stock now, we have grown four times bigger by most measures. The number of Direct Secure Messages sent and received per quarter has gone from about 50 million to over 200 million. Our network has grown from fewer than 1 billion transactions cumulatively, and recently passed 4 billion. Our team is 4 times bigger, as is our annual budget.
I am so proud of our accomplishments. We became an ANSI accredited standards development organization, acquired SAFE Identity, and this year, merged with the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC). I have long made it clear to my Board that we wanted to pivot to a focus on TRUST while driving the use and usability of Direct. Today we offer multiple services to our members and the industry including accreditation, HITRUST assessment and technical trust services for Direct Secure Messaging, Carequality, eHealth Exchange, and TEFCA.
We collaborate with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), CMS, HHS, WEDI , The Sequoia Project, CommonWell Health Alliance, Civitas Networks for Health, CARIN Alliance, and many more organizations as well as our members. Our membership today is extremely diverse beyond even the HIT companies, payers and providers in the healthcare sector to include app companies, social care organizations, and identity companies.
Our standards efforts include work to enable sensitive information exchange within the community even beyond healthcare. We are engaging with cloud fax vendors to establish standards for trustworthy exchange of data by fax. We are working with the remote online notaries to enable trusted communication of health documents. We are building out new accreditation programs to improve trust in the consumer health application ecosystem to add to our portfolio of accreditations that assess compliance for nearly 100 healthcare companies large and small.
You should watch us, we are just getting started!
Special thanks to my team to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude - Kelly Gwynn, Lee Barrett, Kathryn Ayers Wickenhauser, MBA, CHPC, CHTS, Kyle Neuman, Alexander Young, Susan Flynn, Ronald S. Moser, Debra Hopkinson, Stacy Clements, Taylor Gaunt, Mischelle Curtin, Lesley Berkeyheiser, Tom Hanks, CCSFP, PHIAS, Mark R McLaughlin, CCSFP, CHQP, Rick A. Moore, PhD , Felix Ofori, Larry Watkins, Stephen Weiss and yury vayman. Thanks to my board members past and present who helped us make this all possible, and to the EHNAC Commissioners. And thanks to our Legal and regulatory advocates, Jodi Daniel, Bryan Brewer, Stanley Nachimson, Doug Peddicord and Sophia McLeod. Special thanks to Ginna (Yost) Wotowey Wotowey for helping us assemble a great team and to David Kibbe who founded the organization in 2012.
I have had a great time here. Time flies when you are building a trusted ecosystem!
We are celebrating five years under the leadership of our President and CEO, Scott Stuewe! Congratulations, Scott. Happy anniversary!