The Digital Signage Revolution in Healthcare
When used effectively, digital signage is an advertising medium which
allows for the opportunity to maximize your potential while minimizing
costs. Ideal for marketing, communications, and training, Digital
Signage helps your message stand out above the crowd, while improving
the consumer experience and potentially earning revenue. Digital Signage
is not an entertainment medium (even though it can be used as one), but
a communications method.
Digital Signage gives you the ability to inform, educate and
entertain. The real value of digital signage is to be able to deliver
the right message at the right time to the right audience. It lets you
plan what content you want to show (unlike TV).
With Digital Signage You Can
- Inform your employees
- Inform your patients and visitors
- Generate extra revenue
- Decrease perceived wait time
- Save on costs
- Help reduce your environmental impact
- Reinforce your brand image
- Communicate health services or health plans
The Benefit of Digital Signage for Patients
From a fear of procedures and devices to the general unknown of
outcomes, a hospital or clinic visit can be a nerve-wracking event.
Reducing Anxiety
Research has shown that providing education about a procedure to the
patient before the patient undergoes a procedure can reduce the
patient’s anxiety levels.
Patient Education
This gives the patient a lot of knowledge about the experience, and
can help generate much stronger dialogue between the patient and the
doctor. One facility, located in Connecticut, decided to implement
Educational Digital Signage and the result was an 80% increase in
referrals.
Informing Family And Friends
The family is exposed to the information, strengthening the bonds
between the entire family and hospital, an ongoing effort to reduce
anxiety. Reducing the Perception of Wait Times It is often assumed and
stated that an audience in a waiting room is a “captive audience.” This
is not true. The waiting room is full of people pre-disposed with
thoughts of their loved ones being cared for. People in waiting rooms
have questions, concerns, and a desire for information. When addressed
with targeted and relevant digital signage, the content can reduce
anxiety, boost the viewer’s knowledge base, and reduce the perceived
waiting time.
Marketing of Medicine
Much like shopping online, many people now head to the Internet to
learn more about medical conditions and procedures, especially before
visiting the hospital. A Digital screen in a medical waiting room serves
the patient / parent by providing information directly related to her
top-of-mind presence, the reason they are there. It serves the practice
by motivating the viewer to ask questions, report observations, and
reduces perceived waiting time. It serves the advertiser by providing
that viewer engagement resulting in recall, as well as being associated
with the viewer’s doctor carrying her perceived recommendation.
The Benefit of Digital Signage for Staff
Patients come and go, though, and often the real beneficiary of a
digital media network can be the staff. By their very nature, hospitals
operate under a very high level of awareness and preparation. Digital
signage is a medium of time and relevance, where information can be
delivered instantly.
Admissions Process
It used to be that paperwork was the first order of business when
checking in. From medical and safety standpoints, the documentation
could contain extremely important information – whether a patient is
allergic to any medications, for example. But once entered, it’s
difficult to know who will see it and when. By using online resources
coupled with the digital network, the staff now has access to this
information upon arrival. Then staff at all levels can access it to
quickly determine the best course of action for the patient.
Information and Alerts
Hospitals are living-breathing entities with schedules that change by
the minute. When events have moved to different locations or times, or
new events occur, the ability to share this information with everyone
on-site in a timely and relevant fashion is critical. Imagine a scenario
where a large-scale accident is sending dozens of patients to a single
emergency room. With digital signage, messaging can be provided not only
to the ER but also to all other floors and levels where patients may
need immediate care.
Locate, Navigate, Medicate
Interactive, way-finding digital signage can show the patient the
right way to where they are going.Doctors and staff are rarely grounded
to one building or area, routinely working at various locations within
the system. Almost like an airport terminal, digital signage can provide
staff with updates on the locations of specialists and doctors at any
given moment during the daily schedule.
Continuing Education
Every licensed physician in the U.S. must go through a certain amount
of Continuing Medical Education, or CME, every year to maintain a
license. Digital signage networks that have day-parting control or
on-demand features can allow staff and physicians to watch videos on the
same network during off-hours, reducing the need for another channel of
programming.
The Benefit of Digital Signage for Facility
While much of the operation of a hospital system comes from a central
location, that operation is affected by internal and external
influences. A centralized digital signage network empowers the system to
communicate with determined speed and accuracy, to keep everyone
informed, and to provide a degree of efficiency in the management. The
medical field is continually evolving with regulations, laws, forms, and
procedures around the well being of patient. Every facet of health care
is always under scrutiny and very often subject to change. Interactive
content delivered by the administration can give the staff relevant and
timely information as it pertains to the system as a whole.
Usage Manuals for Tools
Every day new technology enters the medical field, from surgical
devices to health monitors to robots and tiny cameras that assist
surgeons in the operating room. In the same way that digital signage can
deliver videos about procedures, digital signage can deliver
educational material about the hospital infrastructure. Further, because
the videos are located on a central server, they can be accessed
anywhere at any time – there is no need to haul around instruction
manuals.
Philanthropy
Fundraising has become a major revenue stream for hospitals,
especially for nonprofit hospitals and facilities that care for large
numbers of under- or uninsured patients. In 2010, over $8.2 billion were
donated to health care facilities. Screens provide greater visibility
to the philanthropic community. Viewers can learn more about the donor,
show where the donor’s money may be going, and offer greater recognition
for the donor’s activities with the facility.
Advertising
A hospital can deliver a very targeted audience that may be very
attractive to certain types of advertisers. Hospitals can use digital
signage to promote surrounding businesses and partners that strengthen
the relationship between them for the benefit of the patient. This
establishes and grows the hospitals brand in the experiential marketing
that many health care facilities are aiming to achieve.
Reduction of Errors
One of the human traits that digital networks can reduce is
misunderstanding due to poor communication. Due to their closed-circuit
nature, digital signage networks offer a level of control where
individuals can monitor and filter every piece of content being pushed
out over the network. Often, more eyes fall on content than just the
doctor and the patient. This encourages viewers inside the system to be
quality assurance specialists as well, ensuring that all content going
out over the network is accurate.
Cost-Savings
A facility will spend thousands of dollars each time new marketing
materials are printed, including costs for shipping and the time
required for employees to sort through and hang traditional advertising.
A digital signage solution reduces costs by eliminating printing costs
and allowing content to be managed remotely.
Compare the Competition
Healthcare providers that are looking to add a solid-state digital
signage solution or replace their vulnerable PC-based system should be
aware that many digital signage players do not include software, which
can add to your initial cost—sometimes substantially. Others may offer
free software, but it isn't really free, just a limited time trial.
Mediaura’s ProBuilder Digital Signage solution is hardware agnostic,
extending your cost-savings even further during implementation.
Key Features of Mediaura's Software
- Patent-Pending drag-and-drop interface to customize your signs
- Integrated image library to manage your assets online
- Advanced enterprise ready multi-store and multi-sign management tools
- Full-featured scheduling tool with day-parting, recurring schedules, one-time future event planning, and more
- Historical archive showing proof of playback
- Our player software has offline caching capabilities, a custom
rendering engine to reduce bandwidth, and polling to ensure your display
never goes blank due to loss of internet connectivity
- API for integration with existing digital signage networks
- ...much more
Contact Mediaura
Contact Mediaura today to learn more about our custom software
solutions. We are committed to offering turn-key solutions that maximize
profits and reduce costs, so that your business of facility can retain
its edge on the competition.
