Digital Signage: The most popular and cost-effective way to interact
Digital Signage is becoming more and more popular within the healthcare industry. Whether the intent is to keep visitors occupied, interact with employees or enhance the patient experience, digital signage is the most popular and cost-effective way to do so.
With people now starting to choose hospitals and care homes based on amenities instead of medical characteristics, it is vitally important that you are not left behind…and Healthcare TV Company is here to advise you on how to optimise your operations through the use of Digital Signage
Start with your waiting rooms...
Digital signage is the perfect way for you to interact with patients and visitors during their stay in the establishment; with waiting times growing it is the perfect platform to reach a growing number of visitors and increase revenue to be put towards funding. As well as entertaining visitors with the displays, you can use the screens to market your own or 3rd party products to visitors which will allow you to generate a new stream of income that can be put towards research or other non- budgeted operations throughout the hospital/care home.
Anxiety levels are lowered when waiting if patients have some sort of explanation. David Maister says “Unexplained waits feel longer than explained waits” (DigitalSignageToday). Meaning that if you use digital signage effectively, for example showing waiting times and possibly queue numbers, will make the waiting room a much less anxious place and will allow patients to relax before they are seen to. This combined with showing news feeds, TV programming, and relevant healthcare information will decrease the perception of wait time.
Another appropriate use of digital signage in the waiting room would be sharing other patients success stories. When patients are going through a hard time, it is always helpful to give them reminders that other people have been going through the same process and fought through it, it’s always nice to show support.
Make it easy to navigate around...
It is not uncommon for people to get lost in all the different wings of a hospital and they can often get frustrated when they are not given the right guidance of where they are/supposed to be. This is where digital signage really helps; you can have interactive displays around the hospital that will show visitors where they are and where they need to be going. This sort of technology is something that will really give your establishment that “wow” factor and will ensure a smooth patient journey.
Digital Signage can also be dotted around the building to help guide people around, you can also use it as subtle reminders about health & safety and hygiene within the hospital, messages can easily be updated throughout all departments with the click of a button to save putting up flyers reminding people to use hand sanitiser etc.
More importantly, digital signage can be utilised as an emergency alarm system around your hospital/care home. In the case of a fire, all the screens would turn red sounding an alarm letting patients and visitors know that they need to evacuate the building. Staff would be able to keep up-to-date on safety procedures using signage displays in the staff canteen.
Increase your efficiency...
Although digital signage might seem like a significant cost, when used correctly, it can vastly reduce your marketing spend. With a cloud-based signage system, you can control your content centrally and update in real time. That way you can interact with your visitors/patients without the costs of designing and printing marketing materials. Furthermore, it saves a lot of valuable staff time as you would have eliminated the lengthy, time-consuming task of going around the building putting up new flyers every time you want to share a message or advertise something to your residents and their families. This will save both money and time, which are vital in the healthcare industry.
Digital signage does not only benefit when it comes to engaging with patients and visitors, but it is also a very helpful tool for employees. When you use digital signage in effective places like staff break rooms or the canteen it allows to display critical messages, training initiatives, treatments and safety alerts with ease to keep all employees fully up-to-date with proceedings within the hospital/care home.
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