In NHS trusts across the country, a momentum has been building to engage patients in innovative ways.

NHS Patient Engagement – engage patients whilst entertaining them

Driven by a desire to enhance patient experience, healthcare providers have been moving away from outdated patient entertainment systems that charge patients to watch otherwise free television.

Instead, they have been making new systems work harder – in part by distracting patients with the media they are accustomed to at home, aiding in their recovery, but also in ways that educate and inform.

Such systems are being deployed in ways that provide insights to patients about their care, their condition, their procedures, and the exercises they can take to help to enhance their outcomes.

Media technology at the bedside is being used to capture patient feedback on services provided. It is able to direct patients to relevant services in the community that might be needed post-discharge.

And it is starting to lessen some of the pressures faced on busy wards – allowing patients to use their bedside screens to request assistance for bathroom visits, order their meals, engage with the chaplaincy service, or simply to ask for a glass of water, such that requests are fielded directly to the right members of staff, and not always busy nurses.

In more than 150 NHS organisations, patients can now access these services for free. But the opportunity can be scaled significantly further.

Some hospitals are achieving engagement benefits at-scale, trust-wide, or across their estate.

Many have also started to do this in pockets of best practice where budgets permit. Specific wards might have received dedicated funding from beneficiaries to make this happen, for example.

In other trusts, success may be hindered by ageing patient entertainment systems that are not used due to cost, and that provide limited content. And in some scenarios, there may be no provision for patient entertainment technology at all.

Now, with patient engagement such a strategic NHS priority the opportunity is to deliver content that entertains, engages, educates more equitably for all patients – and it is something more and more trusts are working to make possible.

An expansion of this technology could enable a significant boost for patient engagement. But it is not the only tool in the box.

Digital signage – engaging patients before they reach a ward

With effective patient engagement and communication required by both NHS policymakers and regulators, hospitals are looking to seize every opportunity.

A growing number are examining new ways to engage patients and visitors before they reach a ward, using technology in areas of high-volume footfall, where dwell time is a factor.

Effective digital signage in these areas is one means to achieve that. Digital screens in waiting rooms and reception areas is not a new concept, but the means by which content is being delivered and devices supported is changing.

Healthcare organisations under financial pressures might not be able to invest in new screens, or afford time from their busy teams to ensure that hardware and the content displayed is effectively maintained.

A new model is now being introduced where all of this is outsourced – in some cases even the cost.

Screens can be installed in busy areas where they can reach the most people with messages that engage audiences with messages around hospital and community services, public health issues, vaccinations, patient safety matters such as sepsis, site specific content, and clinical priorities that might contribute to a provider’s CQUIN targets.

Financial models to make this affordable, and potentially even revenue generating, are being introduced.

Hospitals can outsource the management of media provision and can intersperse NHS messages, with appropriate sponsored content. Such content would be fully approved by the trust and would be carefully focussed on products and services complementary to patient care – for example high street pharmacies and other health and wellbeing services. It could also include messages from relevant charities.

Trusts could choose for screens to be installed entirely free of charge. Some are already beginning to work with us to make this happen – with two acute trusts and around 50 GP surgeries taking advantage of a new digital signage service.

This is about innovative provision of technology, so that it can make an immediate difference without the need for financial burdens on the NHS.

Making more of WiFi as an engagement tool

A third technology tool that could complement these approaches is WiFi. Now in place across every NHS trust in the country, free WiFi was originally launched with the idea of exposing patients to self-help tools.

Hospitals are now looking to take that one step further, by directing users to a customised landing page that can provide key information to engage patients, families and visitors.

It can show key information about services available, and flag important public health messages, as well as messages relevant to the specific health needs of the local population.

An interconnected opportunity

Healthcare organisations may be able to harness one engagement tool to reinforce another. Digital signage might flag how visitors can access the WiFi, to avoid busy nurses having to answer such questions.

More than that, this is about engaging patients at the point of contact in the system – and making sure the technological enablement exists to support that reach, at that moment.

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Tim Kelsey and Martha Lane Fox called for WiFi to be made available free of charge throughout the NHS back in 2015.

The vision of NHS England’s then national director for patients and information, and the former UK digital champion, was to give patients greater access to digital health apps, self-help tools, and social networks, in ways that could “support recovery and promote well-being”.

It was a bold and positive move for the health service that now, in 2024, has been widely achieved – at least from a technology standpoint. Free WiFi is available to patients across the NHS estate.

But enabling access to the internet only goes part way to achieving the goals that sat behind the vision.

That’s one of the reasons that more and more UK hospitals have been taking a different approach to media services.

Moving away from outdated NHS technology and media services

Entertainment services provided on many screens you might find on an arm at the hospital bedside, have all too often been the subject of negative publicity.

Currently there are around 40,000 terminals still in place on hospital wards in the UK, that are at best more than a decade old, many significantly older.

Sometimes charging patients more than £10 per day to watch otherwise free television, such devices are often barely used on wards, despite a requirement for them to be always powered on.

They can be difficult to operate, and do little to serve the needs of patients, or the health service.

It’s for these reasons that many NHS trusts have in the past chosen not to provide patient media services to patients.

But with lengthy agreements coming to an end, a drive to rethink a patient entertainment model that was first introduced a quarter of a century ago, has been building momentum within the NHS.

A drive toward patient stimulus technology

Trusts now want to do much more than provide basic entertainment services. The opportunity is to stimulate patients in their care.

That in part means being able to distract patients, and support them in their recovery with access to the same sorts of media and streaming services that they are used to having at home.

But it also means better engaging patients in their care, and supporting a better overall patient experience.

The aim is to provide patients with access to digital assets and patient facing apps that can inform them about their care. Systems should be able to amplify information about the operation a patient has had, or provide further insight and actions that patients can carry out after their procedure in order to optimise their outcomes.

Digital tools can help to support patients in their onward care journey – for example allow them to find and choose care providers for when they leave hospital.

Media services can allow patients to do everything from arranging time with the hospital chaplaincy service, to speaking to friends and relatives, to ordering from onsite retailers.

Hospitals can also use the same systems as a means to capture patient feedback – such as the NHS Friends and Families Test.

And modern approaches often require media platforms to integrate with other hospital systems, in ways that can release time for busy nurses. For example, providing patients with the means to order their meals, request a glass of water, or find out when they are likely to go home, without needing to ask a question.

Overcoming cost barriers in an age of inequity

Many NHS trusts have been enabling this type of service entirely free of charge to patients.

With healthcare equity now a priority commitment, access to such media and the potential it offers for enhancing the care experience, doesn’t need to be determined on the basis of whether patients can afford to pay.

Resources are stretched more than ever in the health service, and it is easy to dismiss investment in such systems as unnecessary. But feedback from both staff and patients where this has been done well, tells a different story of value and impact.

Models can be put in place to make this possible everywhere in the NHS, especially if providers of such systems work with trusts in fairer ways than older contracts have allowed, listen and understand pressures faced on wards, and collaboratively create genuine solutions that respond to strategic healthcare needs.

And with the need to improve patient experience and satisfaction so high on the agenda of the new government, a role can be played in addressing national priorities.

The last decade saw NHS leaders seek to create social impact through the introduction of WiFi. Prior to that, the early 2000s saw a central push for ‘patient power’, through bedside communications. Now policymakers might consider how to seize on the building momentum in the 2020s, and build into national strategies how the NHS might stimulate patients by using media in ways that make a meaningful difference.

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