St. Mary's Medical Center in Evansville, Ind., has installed the InfoValue Healthcare TV Solution to deliver HD education video-on-demand content to patients.
The IPTV solution can provide personalized patient content using time-shifted television, and it allows network personal video recording. InfoValue markets the service as a way for hospitals to offer a "quadruple play" for patients: video, voice, data and TV.
Healthcare TV is built on the InfoValue Quick Video IPTV platform. Quick Video supports both standard definition and HD video standards, including H.264 and MPEG-2. It can also simultaneously stream multiple videos at different data rates, and it can be clustered for scalability.
Clusters ensure failover protection so that video does not stop if the server or network fails. Additionally, the solution can be deployed in a modular fashion by adding servers incrementally without replicating the whole video repository.
Quick Video also offers monitoring and management features to ensure that patients download only appropriate material. The solution works with RSTP-compliant devices such as Mac, PC or set-top boxes.
Healthcare TV is compatible with standard IP networks including Ethernet, cable modem, WiMax, Wi-Fi, xDSL and more. The system utilizes InfoValue's I/O tunneling technology, which serves as a cable replacement solution. Essentially, it transmits input signals to a remote output over an IP or Ethernet network.
Hospitals have known for a long time that transmitting healthcare information over television can help patients to increase their knowledge and engagement. In 1995, the Journal of Pediatric Child Health published an Australian study in which televisions were used to show child health programs in the waiting room at an Adelaide hospital.
The results found that some viewers increased their knowledge of particular issues by as much as 70 percent. Researchers also noted that some viewers made changes to their lifestyles that benefited their health.
“Our HealthcareTV solution fills a void in the market; a high-quality, cost effective patient education and entertainment portal," said InfoValue's senior sales executive, Richard Chen. "We firmly believe that St. Mary’s Medical Center will benefit greatly from the multitude of features and capabilities that HealthcareTV provides.”
Edited by
Ashley Caputo
