Hospitals across the globe have begun to embrace digital signage. From reception areas to wards and even car parks with outdoor digital signage, screens are being installed in all manner of places throughout hospital premises.
But unlike many industries that have adopted digital signage as an advertising medium, hospitals have found use for it as a great method of passing information to staff, visitors and patients.
Why Digital Signage?
Communication has always been a challenge in a hospital setting. With so many different members of staff, in so many departments and a continual daily supply of new patients and visitors, ensuring people are informed about important information can be difficult.
Pagers, notice boards and PA systems are just some of the communication systems that hospitals have employed in the past but digital signage is proving even more effective than many of these
For hospitals, digital signage provides the ability to pass information at real time. Important messages can be relayed to every digital signage screen all over the hospital (and even across other sites in the hospital trust too) at the click of a button.
This is so much more effective than the traditional notice board where some poor administrator had to photocopy and walk to each and every notice board to pin up the information and as hospital grounds are very large, that process itself can take a while.
And quite often it could be days before staff members read it or had the information filtered down to them, which is why digital signage is so useful to hospital environments.
And it’s not just messaging to staff members that it is benefiting. Digital signage can provide visitors with important information too – such as ward closures and visiting times – helping to avoid confusion – and even outdoor digital signage can be used to ensure that even not yet entering the hospital can be made aware of important information
LCD enclosures are commonly used in hospital environments as protective enclsoures. These are useful for outdoor applications to protect from the weather but commonly they are also used in psychiatric wards and other areas with vulnerable adults for television viewing as the LCD enclsoures can prevent the television being used as a weapon or a means to committ self harm.
