EMRs and CPOE are all well and good. But what about one of the lesser discussed areas of healthcare IT? What about on-demand movies and touch-screen computers and whizz-bang video games? When patients are laid up in hospital beds, don't they deserve to have a little fun while these new advancements in information technology are helping to keep them healthy?

As it turns out, those two functionalities aren't as divergent as they may appear.

"Hospital stays can be a lonely and daunting time for patients of all ages, so it’s important to ensure that patients feel connected to the outside world," says Ben Packman, commercial and media director for Hospedia, the UK's largest patient bedside entertainment provider.

And so Hospedia develops technology that offers phone call packages, radio, TV and wi-fi. It's recently unveiled a new, fully digital 15-inch touchscreen that offers better viewing quality and "paves the way for on demand and interactive services such as films and games," says Packman.

But Hospedia's bedside systems also "have the capability to deliver over £14 million in savings for the NHS in England every year," he says, as they're also used for tasks such as real-time patient surveys and bed management.

"As well as remaining a source of entertainment and communication for patients, the systems could be integrated into the day-to-day lives of hospital staff, used by everyone from porters and cleaners to clinicians and management," says Packman. "As the technology develops, it would be possible to integrate the Hospedia system into the patient stay from beginning to end."

Richard Cooke is CEO of Dublin-based Lincor. His MEDIVista is a leading bedside clinical computer and digital entertainment and communications solution. It's mostly in Europe and Asia right now. But Lincor has been making recent forays stateside, with installations in Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, N.J. and several MultiCare clinics in Washington State.

Above all, says Cooke, Lincor is in the "access business" – that means patients accessing entertainment, but also docs getting at clinical information. "With the big push to get EHR adoption in the U.S., after hospitals decide to put in electronic records, the next thing they're trying to figure out is: How am I going to get access to them."

Enter Lincor's product, which offers "a full multimedia experience," says Cooke: telephone, IPTV delivery, movies on demand, Web browsing, and more. A magnetic credit card reader on the machine allows patients to purchase entertainment services – and "allows hospitals to make up a lot of recoupment through patient revenue, effectively buying time on the system at a rate usually set by the healthcare provider."

More importantly, the system offers physicians "access to whatever the backend clinical system is, whether it's from McKesson or Meditech or whatever. They log in directly from the terminal straight into the HIS system.
That sort of functionality is crucial, Cooke says. After all, "if it's an unreliable entertainment system it's annoying, and the patient won't be happy. But it's not as serious." A malfunctioning clinical system is a bit more serious.

Michael O'Neil, founder and CEO of Bethesda-based GetWellNetwork, which specializes in turning hospital room TV monitors into interactive communication devices for patients, families and clinicians, came up with the idea for his company when he was a non-Hodgkins lymphoma patient, in and out of hospitals over the course of his treatment.

Feeling, he says, "like we were on the outside looking in on our own care experience," was a strong impetus in his development of what O'Neil calls "interactive patient care."

Healthcare IT is "very clinician-focused," he says. The goal of GetWellNetwork is to deliver entertainment while also – and much more importantly – "proactively engaging patients and families throughout the care process, leveraging the very workflows the clinicians are doing."

For example, if a physician orders a new pain medication for a patient, "what we do is take that order, then create prompt, overlaying over a live television feed of, say, ESPN or the local news: 'Michael, you've just been prescribed a pain medication by Dr. Anderson. Please click here to let us know what kind of pain you're in.' In another instance, the system might be use to show a video on fall-prevention as a precursor to a Hollywood movie.

The point, is to "leverage entertainment to get folks involved," says O'Neil. "This is not about a patient going on-demand and finding cool things to watch. This is about understanding the systems and process of care and integrating the patient's involvement very deeply into that."

Not to discount the importance of entertainment, he clarifies. "In hospitals, patients might sit for hours or for days. Certainly there's some healing in allowing them to relax and enjoy their time. But entertainment is a means to an end: the nicer the user-interface is, the more offerings we present, the more it gives us a better chance to engage the patient and thus drive an outcome."

Manick Choraria, managing director of ICE Middleware, a London-based maker of bedside communication and IT integration technology, sees this dual use of hospital room entertainment portals increasing. "Just see how the field of airline passenger entertainment" has expanded with personalized Web and touch screen options, "patient centric features will increase with the addition and availability of greater choice," he says.

But "in my view it will be the developments on the hospital-centric features that will spur this sector and lead to a more efficient, safer and secure working practice," he says. "As the platform becomes commonplace it will encourage developments of various applications with their own utility."