To deliver quality healthcare and a good patient experience, a hospital needs to balance convenience and cost. One way that healthcare providers are achieving these goals is by adopting digital media technologies that are designed to keep their patients and staff more informed and better connected.
What is Digital Media?
Digital media in healthcare encompasses a wide range of technologies and services. From using telemedicine to provide convenient remote doctor visits and offering patient portals, so patients can access their health record from home to using digital signage in waiting rooms to help reduce perceived wait time, modern healthcare is being driven by digital media solutions that not only improve the overall patient experience, but also help keep costs down.
Here are the top 5 types of digital media used in a healthcare setting.
Social Media
Social media makes it easy for health care providers to share information, promote healthy behaviors, engage with the public, and educate and interact with their patients, caregivers, students, and colleagues. Social media is also highly effective at helping providers develop their professional network, increase awareness of news and discoveries, motivate patients, and provide valuable health information to their local communities.
Digital Signage
Digital signage is one of the most effective ways to reduce your patient’s perceived wait time. When installed in strategic areas, like in waiting rooms, cafeterias, parking garages, and hospital lobbies, digital signage provides a captive audience an escape from the tediousness of waiting because it gives them something else to focus on. Digital signage can be used to share a wide variety of programming, from entertainment to information, that your patients, visitors, and staff will appreciate.
Advertising Screens
Digital advertising screens allow a healthcare facility to promote its services in a highly visual and cost-effective way. Offering your patients, visitors, and staff mobile charging stations with built-in LED advertising screens is a great way to boost your brand and share information that these individuals will find valuable.
Telemedicine
During the Covid pandemic, telemedicine and telehealth services grew to new heights because they allowed patients to stay in contact with their health care providers and keep their appointments despite being quarantined at home. These services rely strongly on digital media technologies like electronic information and telecommunications and streaming technologies to work, thus making them among the most important types of digital media used in healthcare today.
Digital Health Technologies
Digital health technologies are being employed throughout the healthcare industry in an effort to improve outcomes and reduce overall costs. Some of the other ways digital media is being used to help patients, doctors, and staff is through technologies such as:
- Patient portals
- Remote patient monitoring
- SaMDs (software as medical devices)
- Medical device data systems
- Mobile medical applications
- Wireless medical devices
- Mobile health apps
- And more
Digital media is revolutionizing how hospitals and health care providers meet the needs of their patients, visitors, and staff. With digital media, achieving greater patient outcomes and higher satisfaction levels along with increased profit potential and reduced costs for HCPs is not only a reality, it’s happening right now.