Healthcare ISVs who design their software for use with touchscreen interfaces can add significant value for their users – both clinicians and patients – in hospitals and other care settings. “Touchscreens enhance patient experiences and engagements throughout the patient journey,” Jeff Fountaine, Director, Healthcare Vertical Market for Elo, says. “They also streamline workflows for clinicians, allowing them to spend more time interacting with patients and focusing on patient care. Touchscreens let them do more of what they love to do, care for patients.”
Where Touchscreen Solutions Can Benefit a Healthcare Organization
When you think of touchscreens for healthcare, you may immediately picture a check-in kiosk at the outpatient registration desk or a touchscreen display in a patient’s hospital room. Touchscreen technology, however, can enhance virtually every hospital department and every aspect of patient care, including:
Laboratory
Touchscreens enable hospital labs to operate in the most organized, efficient, and error-free manner. “The lab is focused on throughput,” says Fountaine. “Touchscreens speed processes as techs move from one test to another, update records, and turn around test results more quickly.”
He adds that optimizing efficiency in labs has become particularly important in 2020 when they received a high volume of samples that needed to be tested for coronavirus as fast as possible. Touchscreens optimize processes to help laboratories meet increased demands.
Pharmacy/medication management
Hospital pharmacists must turn around requests for medications accurately and quickly, playing their vital role ensuring the right patient gets the right dose and medication at the right time. Touchscreen displays optimize workflows so pharmacists can fill orders as quickly as possible.
Radiology
Fountaine says that touchscreens are particularly beneficial when clinicians review images with patients. The clinician can use the touchscreen to display various images as they explain findings to the patient.
Surgery
Surgical teams use touchscreen technology in several ways. For better capacity management, hospitals can replace whiteboards with touchscreen systems that allow clinicians to see OR status, how procedures are proceeding, and when staff is needed to turn the room. Automating the system not only provides better experiences for patients and their families, but it also helps hospitals maximize throughput and revenues.
Fountaine adds that Elo monitors are also a part of medical education. “Our monitors enable broadcasts around the world for training and interprofessional collaboration,” he says. “If a surgeon is performing a new procedure, he or she can use our touchscreens to initiate and manage these broadcasts.”
Nurse management
Large format touchscreen displays help nurses understand the needs of individual patients and interact with the display to initiate vital actions. For example, a nurse can see on the touchscreen that a patient needs to speak to a dietician and arrange for that consultation. The touchscreen solution can also make discharges proceed more smoothly and efficiently.
Patient self-service/entertainment/nurse call
For the patient, touchscreens enable intuitive self-service functionality, from registration to discharge, automating payment, consent forms, insurance verification and education. Touchscreens also make it easier for patients to communicate with clinicians and request in-room services. Fountaine comments, “Patient self-service allows staff that used to manage those processes spend their time on higher-value tasks.”
You don’t need to worry about whether a touchscreen is available for the healthcare use cases your software addresses. Elo, for example, offers touchscreen solutions that range from 7 to 65 inches, including medical-grade monitors, touchscreens that meet healthcare industry standards for resistance to damage from disinfectants, spills, temperature changes, and other environmental factors.
What ISVs Should Look for in a Touchscreen Vendor Partner
If you are searching for your first touchscreen vendor partner for your solution, Fountaine offers four tips:
- Thoroughly vet the vendor’s touchscreen technology and design.
- Choose a partner whose products have unified architecture to make development easy. Also, research whether they provide SDKs to help you give your clients the functionality they need, such as enhancing check-in experiences with QR code scanning to enable patients to preregister on their smartphones.
- Focus on quality – insist on a commercial-grade solution, not a consumer-grade touchscreen or monitor.
- Consider product lifecycle; organizations in the healthcare industry usually plan on using technology longer than some other verticals, so make sure the vendor’s products will be supported for as long as your clients need them.
Visit Elo more information on its line of medical-grade touchscreen monitors. Elo, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2021, is actively enrolling new ISV partners.
You can also learn more by visiting BlueStar’s Elo webpage.
