It sure looks like it.

Straight from beating out two of Jeopardy’s all-time top performers earlier this month, the artificial intelligence question answering (QA) computer system built by IBM—aptly named Watson, after IBM’s very first president—will soon be moving this type of technology to healthcare for medical applications.

Commercial offerings from Watson technology should be coming to healthcare in 18-24 months, according to IBM and Nuance Communications, Inc.

What Does This Mean for Healthcare?

Since Watson has the uncanny ability to interact in natural human language through a wide range of applications and processes, “it holds enormous potential to transform healthcare effectiveness, efficiency and patient outcomes,” said IBM in a statement.

This means that a computer system built like Watson could be created to acquire information from numerous medical libraries, medical journals and patient’s records to aid physicians in retrieving pertinent information much quicker than if they were to scour through these medical journals on their own.

This so-called tool for physicians has the potential to help with:

• Improved patient safety and physician accuracy

• Reduced time for physicians to evaluate patients

• Personalized treatment options for patient’s specific needs

• Diagnosing and treating patients faster with the most current information available

Watson Technology…Coming to a Hospital Near You…

While IBM is partnering with Nuance Communications Inc. (a computer software technology corporation that specializes in speech and imaging applications) to further develop and invest in research for Watson technology within the healthcare realm, collaborations and commercial offerings are expected to be available in 18-24 months.

What do you think?  Would your hospital and your physicians adapt this type of technology?  If applied accordingly, do you think it could have a positive effect on healthcare?  We’re interested to know what you think!

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Last week, I received a free iPhone 4 case from Apple.

As you have probably heard, some iPhone 4s have been know to have reception troubles that are thought to be corrected by using a protective case, so Apple created a program to give free cases (or refunds for those that had already purchased certain cases). (If for some reason you haven’t heard about this and are an iPhone 4 owner, note that the program expires September 30!).

A screenshot of the iPhone 4 app to place orders for Apple’s free case program.

As an online healthcare marketing strategist, I couldn’t help but think of how this related to what we do and advocate at AVID Design.

Know How to Find Your Customer

As an Apple fanboy, I was aware of the “Antennagate” solution program well before it was launched. But as professional marketing communicator, naturally, I was curious about how Apple would get word out to a presumably large audience in a short period of time.

So, you can imagine how impressed I was when I received an e-mail that advised me of their program. For a healthcare marketer, this reinforces the need to carefully gather and manage information about your patients and to coordinate that information between various departments—especially for potential public relations and health safety disasters that require precise and swift actions.

For instance, say there was a situation where everybody that received a certain vaccination during a certain time period needed to be immediately contacted to see if they were having adverse reactions, and if so, to offer them appropriate solutions. How would you reach them? How would you even know who they were? How would you track how they were reached and if they were reached?

Take Advantage of Communication Technology

Apple’s program announcement included instructions for downloading a free iPhone app that verified my mailing address and gave me options for the case I could order. Again, I was highly impressed with this solution.

Of course, nothing beats a good old phone call where a company can personally interact with a customer—but to do so with every customer poses a logistic nightmare!

Why not take advantage of technology and procedures that you are probably already using for your hospital marketing and communications?

In the vaccination example, this could perhaps mean a tracked e-mail with a survey-like form about their symptoms that assist in the decision-making process. Along with expediting communications, it also provides data that can be analyzed on a microscopic (patient by patient) and macroscopic (aggregated patients) basis so you can quickly assess how well you are reaching patients and the need increase or decrease the situation’s severity and solutions.

What Would YOU Do?

Have you ever experienced an iPhone 4 type of situation at your hospital? How did you handle it? What would you have done differently?

Are you familiar with the iPhone 4 free case program? Did you participate in it? What did you think about it? Did you find any parallels between it and what you do in healthcare marketing and communications?

AVID Design offers award-winning hospital marketing communication solutions. Contact us today for a free Website assessment!

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It’s a good question, isn’t it?

Think about it: Imagine that you just purchased a digital signage system for your hospital. Let’s even take this a step further and presume that you bought, say, 10 media players. You now obviously need to get up to 10 screens, which leads to two questions:

If your digital signage screen size placement is about as random as throwing darts at the wall, take a moment to think about the value of using smaller or larger screen and resolution configurations.

• What size screens do you need?

• Where do those screens go?

Believe it or not, answers to those questions are relative to each other, starting with the most important question about where the screens go. Here’s why.

Virtually every digital signage vendor (including our digital signage solution, CaptivCast™) will tell you all of the exciting places that you can place a digital signage screen. Since we specialize in healthcare and hospitals, our suggestions and solutions are geared towards related locations such as hospital lobbies, waiting rooms, physician and nurse break areas, etc.

Depending on the information that you want to provide to whom—as well as where those recipients are expected to see and hear your message—you can then start analyzing the size of the screens you’ll need.

Last year, wirespring.com published a very compelling blog that featured very specific data about the best placements for a screen, based on the distance of the viewer from the screen, the angle from which they’d view the screen, and of course, the size and resolution of the screen.

To paraphrase their research, the most important thing to achieve is for people to be able to read the screen—which means that on-screen text needs to be at least two-inches tall.

Naturally, this means that if your screen is in a small space, you don’t need a massive screen…but you will definitely want to consider higher resolution.

On the other hand, if you are projecting information to people in a large space, then a large screen will be important, but resolution won’t be as important. Think of the difference between watching a TV in your home vs. watching a big screen in a stadium or arena.

Of course, there are even more geometric assessments to be considered, but the point is that as much careful thought should be given to digital signage screen placement as is given to content and playlist planning. If you are considering a digital signage system, be sure to do your research or to get advice from a qualified consultant.

AVID Design is a leader in hospital communication content and strategy. With our CaptivCast™ digital signage system that is specially designed for hospitals, we can help you find the perfect balance of content and technology. Click here for an online demonstration or contact us for a free consultation!

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Dayparting content for hospital digital signage systems is interesting because it’s a study of contrasts. Although digital signage for hospitals and healthcare systems reflects the leading edge of tech-related hospital marketing, dayparting is one of the oldest mass media strategies.

What time is the best time for displaying content on your hospital’s digital signage screens?

What is Dayparting?

Most simply, dayparting is targeting content and messages for a specific audience at specific times in the day.

For instance, when you think of Saturday mornings, what do you think of? Little kids watching cartoons, right? And what kinds of TV ads are most common on Saturday mornings? Toys, games, sugary cereals, etc., right?

Now think of Saturday night. You are now probably thinking about a very different audience, programming and ads, huh?

Digital Signage Dayparting at Hospitals

Now think about your hospital and all of the different people that come and go at different times. Take this a step further and think about where you have (or could have) digital signage screens.

How can you best take advantage of these unique audiences? Here are some tips:

•  Identify the shifts. What are the key periods of time where you notice marked differences between audiences? Morning? Lunch? Night? Weekdays? Weekends?

• Identify your audiences. Who looks at your messages? Patients? Staff? Vendors or other visitors?

• Analyze your existing media and content. What types of media and content get the most attention? Announcements? Slideshows? Videos? Real-time news and “tickers”?

Charting Your Dayparting

Where are the intersections between audience, schedules and content? Finding these points are where you are most likely going to have the effective dayparting schedules and content.

One of the most effective ways to experiment with plotting schedules is to use colored index cards and a tackboard, just like they do in network television.

Create a grid of your screens on the Y-axis and your optimal time shifts on the X-axis. Are there any cells that are particularly dominated by an audience? If so, what content might be most appealing or relevant?

That’s the basics of dayparting. Like planning network television, a successful schedule requiring lots of experimenting and analysis, as well as excellent content. Good luck!

AVID Design’s CaptivCast™ digital signage system was expressly designed for hospitals and healthcare systems. Get a free online demo and see how easy it is to use digital signage!

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If you are a regular follower of this blog or are familiar with AVID Design, you’ll know that we have quite a bit of experience and passion for interactive healthcare marketing—particularly in the areas of Website design, content and social media.

But did you know we also do digital signage for hospitals?

For the past few years, we’ve been consistently improving our award-winning digital signage solution, CaptivCast™. More recently, we’ve upped our attention towards marketing the brand, starting with a recently launched, fully redesigned Website, www.captivcast.com. Check it out and tell us what you think. Does it look good? Does it give you the information you’d need to make a decision about using our product?

Let’s Talk About Digital Signage, Shall We?

Ironically, despite our regular social media participation and contributions to several related healthcare marketing topics, digital signage has not been one of them.

Until now.

In the coming days and weeks, expect to see and hear more from us about this exciting technology.  As advocates of integrated marketing strategies for hospitals and healthcare systems—such as economic repurposing of content—digital signage is a technology and medium that we believe hospital marketers will increasingly depend upon, not at all unlike mobile.

Of course, social media is a conversation, which means that in addition to the ideas, concepts and topics that we find interesting, we’d like to know what subjects matter most to you.

What is it about digital signage for hospitals that you find most fascinating? Frustrating? Confusing? Exciting? Let us know!

Let’s get this discussion started…

Visit the new CaptivCast™ Website to request an online demonstration or request a quick price quote.

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