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by latch
5596 days ago
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Honest questions (and from these questions you can probably tell that I haven't spent much time in Hospitals): 1 - Are you saying mere access to content is the problem? Do Hospitals have limited reading material? Do libraries not provide outreach services to patients? Do friends/family not bring content? 2 - Is there a need and/or market to create/aggregate content specific for this audience? 3 - Anything more specific about the content besides being uplifting? Seems like a broad range of content is needed, which is proving a challenge to my brain. 4 - Is there a technology angle to this at all? Hospitals aren't well connected, old people (who account for a lot of people in Hospitals I'd assume) aren't very tech savvy. I mean, given your audience here, is there something we can do at a technical level to help? |
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The problem for me was that all content distribution in the hospitals... the TV, the magazine trolleys, the "library" (another trolley)... were all controlled by small private companies who have made deals with the hospital.
The content is old, seriously lacking in variation (you can have any magazine you want, as long as it's a women's gossip/variety mag), and it's always the same stuff (a few basic cable TV channels that have been recorded, and set on loop).
I had ENDLESS ideas while laying in the beds about technology-based ideas that would make patients a LOT happier, from tablets filled with RSS-fed content from major media companies (+ blogs), to a free WiFi service (if they bring their own laptop/tablet/phone) that is sponsored by marketing, to a subscription-based WiFi connection that gives them proxied web access and where part of the profits go back to the hospital as a donation.
The truth of the situation is, the hospitals won't allow it. They're scared of technology because of interference with equipment, and they're scared of any new content providers in the form of books/magazines/etc because they'll upset the decades-old partnerships with the current partners, and they're pretty much just unable to even comprehend or process any "new ideas" due to the size of the bureaucracy involved at your average hospital.
Again, this is just my view, from my local hospitals. It's different all over the world, and maybe elsewhere there are hospitals that are more open to experimenting with new ways to entertain patients.