The Regional Healthcare Authority of the Castilla y León region in Spain (SACYL), responsible for the healthcare services provision to a population of more than 2.5 M people in 11 hospital complexes.

Context: starting point

In the public hospitals of the Castilla-León region, physicians and nurses access the patient’s data in the HIS via computers located in doctors’ offices and wards.

Regarding the entertainment system, most of the rooms had 2 beds with an old TV set to be shared between the patients. SACYL’s General Directorate commissioned its ICT department the design of a project intended to improve these infrastructures, with the mandate of incorporating a technology that allowed securely consulting the patient’s EHR/EMR at the bedside in real time, avoiding the human error produced by manual transcriptions to the HIS, on the one hand. On the other hand, the system should improve the patient’s experience by providing a modern personal entertainment platform with easy access to a rich set of multimedia services.

With this premise, the General Directorate decided to equip 1.700 hospitalisation beds with last-generation multimedia touch-screen bedside terminals and a software platform capable of providing the digitisation needs, together with the patient’s entertainment in 6 of its hospitals’ complexes

Finally, the solution offered by Mediphealth was the one chosen by SACYL’s ICT department, specifically the MedipMedia software platform with the 18,5” FullHD Advantech patient infotainment terminals, model HIT-W183. This solution builds on the guarantee of an established technological company specializing in the development and deployment of multimedia and HIS access solution in the healthcare sector, with more than 7.000 bedside terminals installed in Spain.

The project had to fulfil the following requirements:

• Supply and deployment of 1.700 touch screen bedside terminals with articulated arm for medical environment, working 24x7x365.

• Control, configuration, content management had to be performed remotely.

• The new system should provide the patients with terrestrial and satellite TV, radio, internet access, phone services, VoD, webcam, … and the payment system should allow both cash and credit card payment

• The system architecture should enable the access to the HIS for the professionals, via a secure identification and authentication process using smartcards containing an X.509 digital certificate. The system should be future-proof, so that it should allow for new services implementation, such as meal ordering, informed consent management or even allowing the vital signs capture and recording onto the EHR together with the nursing scales, nursing controls and other nursing workflows to be digitised and registered onto the HIS

Solution:

Mediphealth, as the tender winner, decided to install the Advantech HIT-W183 18,5” bedside terminal, wall-mounted with an ergonomic hydraulic, articulated arm

For the patient entertainment the MedipMedia software platform (Linux-based) is used. The platform’s graphical design has been customised according to each hospital’s corporate image. It is worth noting that the paediatrics area has a kid’s interface especially designed with attractive colours and specific contents for kids and teenagers.

The physical infrastructure deployed includes a Cat & structured cabling system, multicast networking equipment, IPTV streamers and headends, servers farm, etc.

For the payment system, vending machines have been installed to provide the smart cards with credit preloaded for the patients to make the services purchase directly on the bedside terminals. The payment can be done both with cash or credit card.

Benefits achieved:

Patient’s data, generated at the bed side, are available at the HIS for the physicians in real time and securely. Doctors feel more confidence in the data for the diagnostics.

With the Medip platform, patients interact comfortably with the terminals via the ergonomic articulated arm that can be adapted to the desired position. Now patients can watch national and international TV chains, browse the internet, use Skype, play games, choose a movie from the VoD library, make a phone call,… They will also be able to choose their meal, fill in satisfaction surveys and accessing other hospital services, everything form the patient terminal.

This technology has the potential to evolve and grow. Nurse calling systems, medical device connection and integration, EMR/PACS/RIS consultation are only examples of possible applications that can improve the data traceability and optimise the medical attention. It is a technological bet that can scale up, evolve, and, in summary that is future-proof as it allows for future service and applications adoption.

It is noteworthy that the deployed system is ready to integrate Medipvitals, a disruptive application for the patients’ vital signs digitisation next to the patient, together with the nursing assessment scales and nursing controls (oxygen, insulin, hydric balances,…). Data are automatically registered via the Advantech terminal avoiding the manual transcription, and enabling the immediate availability of the data for doctors to consult and diagnose more efficiently.

About Mediphealth

Mediphealth is a leading company specialized in the development and deployment of multimedia services in the healthcare sector. Our mission is to improve the patient’s experience and optimising the quality of care and the hospital’s workflow.

Mediphealth focuses on two intertwined verticals: an intuitive pati