Jan
23
Improving Hospitals with IPTV
- POSTED BY Ujvári Lukacs IN Technology
Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) is rapidly emerging as a critical element within the digital transformation initiatives of hospitals searching for opportunities to cut back costs, elevate efficiency, and harness intelligent automation to boost the experiences of patients, visitors, and staff alike.
According to analysts at Frost & Sullivan, the widespread outbreak of COVID-19 across the globe has overburdened hospitals with an enormous influx of patients. Traditional hospitals that depend on manual and analog methods are unable to handle the massive patient load with limited resources. As hospitals commence initiatives to enhance outcomes, administrators are searching for ways to divert non-clinical resources to activities that contribute to the health and wellbeing of patients under their care.
It is during this context that current video systems are being reevaluated to see how they support a range of applications in hospitals. Additional to offering in-room entertainment to patients, video today is being employed to:
- Keep hospital staff informed of important developments in their facilities;
- Train and educate doctors and nurses; and
- Communicate important messages — through digital signage — to visitors and personnel in common waiting areas.
When it involves video services, however, this situation in hospitals is, for the foremost part, highly fragmented and really complex. Separate solutions — and indeed entire infrastructures — are created to support different video applications. This leaves hospital leadership with the task of managing an array of overlapping video delivery technologies to deal with the requirements of the varied constituencies they serve.
It is not uncommon to seek out hospitals employing a mixture of coaxial-based cable TV, closed-circuit video communications, and proprietary digital signage networks. Each of those highly siloed applications often requires dedicated infrastructures and staff. This results in major capital and operational expenditures.
As hospitals explore their technology modernization options, there’s growing recognition that IPTV may be a perfect solution for addressing the complete array of hospital video needs.
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IPTV Addresses the Complexity and value of Legacy Video in Hospitals
IPTV consolidates multiple applications onto one data network which may be centrally managed and controlled in an automatic fashion. Hospitals can tailor the delivery of specific content in a secure and efficient manner supported who individuals — or groups — are, by allowing IT departments to leverage role-based access control and advanced encryption technologies on their enterprise networks.
This solution makes it easier for hospitals to produce patients, visitors, and staff with managed access to different categories of content — whether it’s a video on demand, live broadcasts, or proprietary hospital programming. In so doing, it allows hospital leaders to deliver more value with fewer resources.
IPTV, together with abonnement IPTV (IPTV subscription) also creates opportunities to streamline operations and improve service to administrative and clinical functions. Many hospitals, in addition to operating central facilities, also run smaller clinics throughout the communities they serve. The open, intelligent nature of IPTV networks makes it possible for IT staff to remotely manage and deliver consistent video-based services to those clinics. This elevates the patient experience and improves employee productivity.
Security a serious IPTV Benefit for Hospitals
Hospitals handle the foremost sensitive categories of non-public information. Patient data is governed by an increasingly complex array of federal, state, and native rules designed to safeguard consumers because the volume of information generated — and consumed — by hospitals rises exponentially.
It is for this reason that the foremost effective IPTV solutions utilize security measures supported technology developed for military and intelligence agencies to deliver Department of Defense-grade encryption technology. This ensures that every video service delivered over a hospital’s enterprise network is protected to make sure the privacy of patients and security of content are continuously maintained.
In short, effectively deployed IPTV strategies can play a vital role in helping hospitals modernize their technology infrastructures to enable truly patient-centric operations.