Benefits of Digital Signage for Hospitals

Even before the pandemic caused work overload and overcrowding in several hospitals all over the world, the health sector was already experiencing some struggles in hospital management. These struggles include insufficient medical personnel to attend to all patient needs, lack of means to efficiently manage hospital activities and patients, and, of course, financial concerns.

With the features the electronic shelf labels can offer, these problems can be reduced.
 

Signages are a must in hospitals, whether it is a poster displaying the list of medical services the hospital offers, a directory showing laboratory and office locations, or signs indicating directions. Currently, most hospitals use papers as signages—which can be expensive in the long run. 

Whenever there’s a need to update or replace paper signages, there will also be a need to redesign and reprint them, which could add to the hospital’s operational costs. Moreover, the whole process could take a lot of time from making requests in the purchasing department to conducting bidding among printing companies and assigning staff to take down the old signs so they could put up the new ones.

Now, imagine if hospitals use digital labels and digital signages instead. By just reprogramming what the signages should display (through the use of an information sharing feature), hospital signs are immediately updated with almost no time and no effort consumed—and no expenses spent on hiring printing companies.

One of the many benefits of using digital signages for hospitals is how the whole ESL system can help medical personnel attend to patients’ needs and assist administrators in managing hospital activities. And this can be done by replacing traditional paper room signs with digital labels.

Digital labels as patient room signs not only make the hospital look more advanced and sophisticated, but also minimize patient information errors and inaccuracies because it is connected to a centralized system. With a more accurate and always up-to-date patient room sign, doctors, nurses, and other medical staff can tend to the patients’ needs more efficiently.

ESL can be used as conference room signs too, especially for large hospitals that often held meetings and lectures. Hospital digital signages as conference room signs allow the administration to monitor what is happening in the conference rooms and who are the people who booked them. 

Using digital labels is also more eco-friendly than using paper. Paper room signs are disposed of after use, while digital labels only need to be updated through a computer. And because the hospital would no longer require stocks of blank paper room sign templates, digital labels can help with cost-cutting.

If ESLs can be used to display more information about retail products or museum items, then they can serve as digital bedside cards. Placing digital bedside cards near each patient’s bed would display patient information such as full name, attending physician, age, weight, height, the reason for admission, and more. And because the information displayed comes from a main computer or server, the details are always real-time and more accurate, making them more reliable. Additionally, hospital digital signages could be programmed and customized, so hospitals could include medication and check-up schedules on the display.  Not only will these bedside cards help the medical personnel, but they can also reduce (or completely eliminate) the time and effort that staff spent on manually changing traditional paper bedside cards.

Managing a pharmacy is never easy and it is much harder to manage a pharmacy within a hospital. Hospital pharmacies tend to have more medications and medical supplies than simple drug stores due to the kinds of medicines and drugs constantly required in operating rooms and emergency rooms. 

Having electronic price tags can help the pharmacists of hospitals by automating inventory management. This is because ESLs can be integrated with sales management software that can accurately track inventory levels before stocks went completely out. Aside from tracking stock levels, electronic price tags can also be programmed to alert pharmacists which medicines are nearing expiration. This way, mistakes such as giving expired medications can be avoided.

Additionally, electronic price tags can be updated just like the hospital's digital signages and digital labels for patient rooms, so medicine prices can be changed as soon as possible.

The benefits of digital signages for hospitals have a huge impact on the health sector, not just on hospital expenses and management but most especially on the patients and health workers. With ESLs like SOLUM, hospitals can provide patients—and their visitors—with better service without putting health workers under too much stress.

Contact us today to learn more about how our ESL products and technology can help make your hospital deliver world-class services!