By Enzo Daniele, Linked In, Twitter, Email

Patient entertainment today has to offer public and on-demand WiFi services.  

Today’s patients and visitors have high expectations. Yet many don’t have such a great experience when it comes to entertaining themselves during a hospital stay. Many of the bedside entertainment units they encounter are dated and offer limited channel options. 

But what if you want to take advantage of your video-on-demand Netflix subscription? Or download a podcast, listen to your own music or indulge in some games? After all, whiling away an hour or so smashing your previous Candy Crush score is always satisfying. For others, an extended hospital stay is easier to bear when they can spend some quality time on social media, catching up on the lives of friends and family while updating everyone on their own progress.

NHS organisations are aware that the pressure is on to respond to the needs of those they serve. Today’s digitally enabled patients expect to use their smartphones and tablet devices wherever they go. And from their viewpoint, hospitals should be no exception.  When it comes to making their hospital stay more comfortable, they expect to be able to access all the apps they want and need. Using devices they’ve personalised and are familiar with simply makes things a whole lot simpler.

But keeping yourself occupied when you are stuck in hospital in the age of the iPhone can feel a little bit like a ‘back to the future’ retro experience. Especially when you’re confronted with a bulky bedside entertainment unit.  And it’s not just the patient experience that’s impacted. 

Many NHS hospitals are keen to pursue a connected WiFi vision, allowing patients access to the resources and information that matter to them – on whatever device they have.

Not only will this boost patient satisfaction – keeping people entertained in way that’s relevant and personal to them – it also means precious NHS resources can be preserved.  Take for example those bedside entertainment terminals. With high installation and management costs, these bulky systems take up valuable ward space and restrict the ability of bed managers to optimise capacity. What’s more, these units need to be deep cleansed every day – and require valuable power to run. Worse still, they don’t deliver against fast changing consumer expectations.

The good news is that today’s advanced public WiFi systems allow hospitals to give patients access to TV, video-on-demand, games, music, radio, the internet and apps – all on their own devices - as a free or paid for service, replacing outdated patient bedside entertainment systems. Implementing next-gen patient WiFi allows patients and their visitors to surf the internet and make use of the services and entertainment that’s relevant and appropriate for each individual - with customised guest user landing pages packed with time-saving services. For example, patients will soon be able to order their meals online – or see when the hospital’s on-site shops and stores are open.

What’s more, we can make sure everyone stays safe – with web content filtering that protects patient devices against malware, and ensures no one can access or view inappropriate or potentially harmful content that may cause offence to others.

We can make all this happen – while ensuring that the WiFi solution in place is not a major drain on existing IT resources. And we can help hospital's utilise their public WiFi portal to deliver Patient Surveys to adult in-patients, for example. Hospital's tell us that making it easier for patients to find and complete these surveys has resulted in higher completion rates – and greater customer satisfaction.

If you’d like to discover more about how we could enable public WiFI and the advantages of BYOD patient entertainment services, then why not get in touch for an initial chat?