Top 5 Uses Of Healthcare Digital Signage – Looking After Your Patients, Visitors And Staff

Nov 10, 2020 | Healthcare

Alistair Cousins

Alistair Cousins

Healthcare digital signage is significantly improving customer well-being and helping to ease the daily burdens for staff on shifts.

For hospitals, the latest tech is essential for improving efficiency – having effective communication systems can be life-saving.

There are several benefits to healthcare digital signage, popular across hospitals, surgeries and practices.

1. Streamlining the Check-in Process

Healthcare digital signage can include check-in solutions such as digital kiosks or touch screens. These screens help eliminate the pressure receptionist feels when dealing with large queues of patients. Check-in kiosks or tablets provide a smoother check-in process that patients can do themselves, freeing up the receptionist to answer phone calls and pressing issues. Of course, it is just as important to look after the wellbeing of staff as well as the patients, providing a reduction in the stress of an environment can make a hospital a more pleasant place to work. Having visitors check-in to certain areas of the hospital can also help provide demographic and usage data. Smart display devices can even record passersby using technology like facial-recognition. With this information tracked, content can be targeted to better suit its audience. 

Digital screens in welcome areas are ideally positioned to show alerts and notices as patients and visitors are checking-in. Warnings about the spread of bacteria or viruses can be clearly displayed, along with requests that people wash their hands at a sanitary station. These precautions save lives and a prominent display can be the difference between visitors complying or forgetting. Welcome screens are also useful for publishing parking information or sharing weather and traffic updates.

Top 5 Uses Of Healthcare Digital Signage - Looking After Your Patients, Visitors And Staff TrouDigital

2. Revamp the Dreaded Waiting Area

Healthcare waiting areas can be dull places where recent studies have shown that we still spend far too long waiting, despite government interventions and investment to reduce delays. Digital signage can make the wait seem shorter as engaging media like videos, images, and RSS feeds can be played to give your patients something to watch. Waiting rooms can now go a step further and integrate live TV with their waiting room content. This helps to alleviate not only boredom but anxiety, which can have a negative hold on patients’ experience.

Waiting room signage is an invaluable investment in healthcare. Screens allow practices to utilise this wasted time by engaging patients and visitors with information of their choosing, whether health campaigns or hospital news. Turn your waiting room screens into information hubs that help educate patients and visitors on the latest health tips to follow, the latest viruses and bugs to watch out for, etc. Alternatively, screens might be used to show external sponsorship where advertisers will benefit from longer dwell times and therefore likely increase ROI.

Top 5 Uses Of Healthcare Digital Signage - Looking After Your Patients, Visitors And Staff TrouDigital

3. Healthcare Internal Communications

Returning to the technology’s benefits to staff, healthcare digital signage is ideal for internal communication. Screens can act as digital noticeboards, placed in staff rooms, or at strategic points around a site. Among the many possible functions for this platform is a timetable of staff shifts. In healthcare environments, staff is frequently required to work erratic shifts, with changes and reallocations a daily norm. Having a digital timetable that can relay this information in real-time is of great use to teams. Last-minute changes can be updated publically so everyone knows who is working, when, and where. Other useful information internal staff screens might show are the extension numbers of certain departments or personnel.

4. Digital Wayfinding for Healthcare Digital Signage

Hospitals are large sites and it can be very hard to find your way around, whether you are a visitor, patient, or a new member of staff. This is far from ideal when people are often in a hurry to get to where they are going. Healthcare digital signage can aid this challenge by navigating patients and staff to the right-wing through digital wayfinding

Screens can simply show floor layouts with clearly marked wings or more sophisticated touchscreens can offer interactive functionality. Using a wayfinding kiosk or totem, visitors and staff can search their location and receive helpful directions on the route they need to take. Some devices allow for this information to be captured on a mobile phone. Improving wayfinding in health care venues is of critical importance as it has a fundamental impact on the overall operation, as well as visitors’ experience. 

Top 5 Uses Of Healthcare Digital Signage - Looking After Your Patients, Visitors And Staff TrouDigital

5. Encouraging Hygiene Through Medical Digital Signage

Now more than ever, maintaining a good level of hygiene is critical, not only for ourselves, but also for our loved ones, colleagues, and even organisations. The COVID-19 pandemic has put huge stress on the NHS and its staff who have had to deal with a sharp rise of COVID-19 related hospital admissions.

To mitigate the effects of COVID-19 we have all been asked to socially distance, only travel if it’s essential and wash and sanitise our hands regularly. This last point is absolutely crucial, especially within hospitals. Somebody may visit a patient, touching all the doors on their way to and from their visit. These touchpoints may contain millions of germs, viruses, and bacteria which are likely to have made themselves at home on the visitor’s hand. Without hand-washing or sanitising, the visitor’s hands are likely to remain infected. If they leave the hospital they bring these germs, viruses, or bacteria back to their next location. This could be the local supermarket, public transport, or even their family home.

But how can medical digital signage help? This year digital signage innovators have been coming up with creative ways to encourage social distancing, good hygiene, and even more regular temperature testing.

The most common of these new innovations being digital hand sanitisers. Essentially an automatic hand sanitiser integrated with a digital signage display. These units come with the added benefit of targeted healthcare messaging. For example, when a visitor uses the digital hand sanitiser content is triggered on the screen to show the visitor how to properly apply the hand sanitiser to kill as many germs as possible. When not being used the screen acts as a traditional digital signage display and can display social distancing messages, healthcare developments, or even adverts.

Top 5 Uses Of Healthcare Digital Signage - Looking After Your Patients, Visitors And Staff TrouDigital
Healthcare digital signage is a versatile tool for any medical site, elevating the service to customers and making staff’s lives easier.

Want to learn more about digital signage in the healthcare sector? Click the button below to visit our digital signage for hospitals page.

Or to speak with one of our digital signage experts about a healthcare project:
Call – 02380 981110 or Email Us – info@troudigital.com

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