Surging patient volumes in emergency departments require innovative approaches to improve patients' experiences, given the expectations they have formed by interacting with industries such as travel, retail, and dining, where they receive personalized text messaging or in-application updates on their order or the status of their flight. This technology has not been widely adopted in the health care industry, and it presents an opportunity to meet and exceed consumer expectations. At Inova Health System, a diverse team comprising physicians, nurses, patient engagement leaders, and informaticists developed a text-messaging application for delivering real-time updates to emergency department patients and their family members during their visit. This process occurs almost entirely in the background without burdening clinical and nursing staff with additional administrative tasks. The team demonstrated substantial improvement in key patient experience metrics and revealed the broader operational utilities of automated messaging to enhance departmental efficiency.