Changing the landscape – How to move away from the ‘patient pays’ model, so that no patient has to pay for entertainment.

Our mission is to provide a ubiquitous application platform to the NHS for Healthcare providers and to reduce to zero, the cost to patients for hospital provided Patient Entertainment. For this we need the help of Trusts and Charities.

Historically, legacy patient entertainment provider, Hospedia, installed £150 million pounds worth of infrastructure for free, into 120 hospitals in the UK. This was at no cost to the Trust, as the patient was paying a fee to use the service. Over time, as technology and digital transformation has progressed so much, the patient-pays model is no longer feasible in today's day and age.

To stop the patient having to pay, in this solution, SPARK® provides the infrastructure and the Trust invests in the service for a true partnership. Options are available for Trusts to own bedside units also.

The newfound investment will see a new state of the art bedside unit running the market leading SPARK® Media software in unison with a bring your own device (BYOD) solution. The new unit will utilise the existing infrastructure of the wall mounts and health & safety approved equipment to save costs to the Trust. It will feature hundreds of well-known and used entertainment apps such as Netflix, iPlayer and Prime, as well as NHS applications with links to Dementia support, health education, meal ordering and more.

The aim is to educate, entertain, engage and inform patients, whilst making staffs lives easier and benefiting the Trust and their Charities.

By switching to this unified solution, together we begin the path of our three-year vision.

Patient entertainment apps may have entered the market with a heavy focus on distraction — providing patients with some much-needed escapism through access to their favourite media outlets. But as these systems progress, they encourage patients to be present and engaged in their health journey, all while retaining their traditional features.

This solution can be deployed in Trusts now, for as little as £1 per bed per day. Quite a difference to what the patient has to pay currently, at £7.90 a day.

• Free Patient Engagement, Entertainment and Internet
• The latest specification bedside units, with continuous hardware upgrade plan
• Extensive library of applications for clinical and patient use.
• Full clinical access across the NHS
• A unified experience across bedside terminals and BYOD (bring your own device)
  
  

Numerous Trusts have already made the switch, including:

• Hexham General Hospital
• Wansbeck General Hospital
• North Tyneside Hospital
• South Tyneside Hospital
• Fairfield General Hospital
• Hope Hospital
• Northampton General Hospital
• Royal Oldham Hospital
• County Hospital
• Blackpool Hospital
• Sunderland Hospital
• Freemans Hospital
  
  

Results

University Hospitals North Midlands changed their existing pay to use solution in to a free to use system for patients, over a three-month period. The results showed a 300% increase in the TV usage, compared to that from before the trial began.

If you’d like to know more, contact us and we will tell you exactly how little it will cost to make the switch and put the SPARK back in your healthcare tech.