Hospitals have been using technology to stimulate patients in new ways. Innovative approaches to engaging and informing patients could soon rapidly scale. Dean Moody, healthcare services director at Airwave Healthcare, explains how.
In NHS trusts across the country, a momentum has been building to engage patients in innovative ways.
Patient Engagement – engage patients whilst entertaining them
Driven by a desire to enhance patient experience, healthcare providers have been moving away from outdated patient entertainment systems that charge patients to watch otherwise free television.
Instead, they have been making new systems work harder – in part by distracting patients with the media they are accustomed to at home, aiding in their recovery, but also in ways that educate and inform.
Such systems are being deployed in ways that provide insights to patients about their care, their condition, their procedures, and the exercises they can take to help to enhance their outcomes.
Media technology at the bedside is being used to capture patient feedback on services provided. It is able to direct patients to relevant services in the community that might be needed post-discharge.
And it is starting to lessen some of the pressures faced on busy wards – allowing patients to use their bedside screens to request assistance for bathroom visits, order their meals, engage with the chaplaincy service, or simply to ask for a glass of water, such that requests are fielded directly to the right members of staff, and not always busy nurses.
In more than 150 NHS organisations, patients can now access these services for free. But the opportunity can be scaled significantly further.
Some hospitals are achieving engagement benefits at-scale, trust-wide, or across their estate.
Many have also started to do this in pockets of best practice where budgets permit. Specific wards might have received dedicated funding from beneficiaries to make this happen, for example.
In other trusts, success may be hindered by ageing patient entertainment systems that are not used due to cost, and that provide limited content. And in some scenarios, there may be no provision for patient entertainment technology at all.
Now, with patient engagement such a strategic priority the opportunity is to deliver content that entertains, engages, educates more equitably for all patients – and it is something more and more trusts are working to make possible.
An expansion of this technology could enable a significant boost for patient engagement. But it is not the only tool in the box.
Digital signage – engaging patients before they reach a ward
With effective engagement and communication required by both policymakers and regulators, hospitals are looking to seize every opportunity.
A growing number are examining new ways to engage patients and visitors before they reach a ward, using technology in areas of high-volume footfall, where dwell time is a factor.
Effective digital signage in these areas is one means to achieve that. Digital screens in waiting rooms and reception areas is not a new concept, but the means by which content is being delivered and devices supported is changing.
Healthcare organisations under financial pressures might not be able to invest in new screens, or afford time from their busy teams to ensure that hardware and the content displayed is effectively maintained.
A new model is now being introduced where all of this is outsourced – in some cases even the cost.
Screens can be installed in busy areas where they can reach the most people with messages that engage audiences with messages around hospital and community services, public health issues, vaccinations, patient safety matters such as sepsis, site specific content, and clinical priorities that might contribute to a provider’s CQUIN targets.
Financial models to make this affordable, and potentially even revenue generating, are being introduced.
Hospitals can outsource the management of media provision and can intersperse NHS messages, with appropriate sponsored content. Such content would be fully approved by the trust and would be carefully focussed on products and services complementary to patient care – for example high street pharmacies and other health and wellbeing services. It could also include messages from relevant charities.
Trusts could choose for screens to be installed entirely free of charge. Some are already beginning to work with us to make this happen – with two acute trusts and around 50 GP surgeries taking advantage of a new digital signage service.
This is about innovative provision of technology, so that it can make an immediate difference without the need for financial burdens on the NHS.
Making more of WiFi as an engagement tool
A third technology tool that could complement these approaches is WiFi. Now in place across every NHS trust in the country, free WiFi was originally launched with the idea of exposing patients to self-help tools.
Hospitals are now looking to take that one step further, by directing users to a customised landing page that can provide key information to engage patients, families and visitors.
It can show key information about services available, and flag important public health messages, as well as messages relevant to the specific health needs of the local population.
An interconnected opportunity
Healthcare organisations may be able to harness one engagement tool to reinforce another. Digital signage might flag how visitors can access the WiFi, to avoid busy nurses having to answer such questions.
More than that this is about engaging patients at the point of contact in the system – and making sure the technological enablement exists to support that reach, at that moment.
