Evansville, Ind.-based St. Mary's Medical Center has adopted IPTV as a conduit to teach and entertain its patients, using time-shifted television to deliver a quadruple play of video, voice, data and TV.
The hospital's in-house network is built on the InfoValue Quick Video IPTV platform that, InfoValue said, supports both standard definition and HD video standards such as H.264 and MPEG-2. The system can be clustered for scalability by simultaneously delivering multiple streams at different data rates, which, among other things, ensures that the video does not stop if the server or network fails.
The InfoValue HealthcareTV product "fills a void in the market" by providing a "high-quality, cost-effective patient education and entertainment portal," Richard Chen, the company's senior sales executive said in a story reported by HealthTech Zone.
The system is designed to benefit the patient but keep the hospital in control at all times via monitoring and management features that prevent patients from downloading inappropriate material. Because it's compatible with standard IP networks, including Ethernet, cable modem, WiMAX, Wi-Fi and xDSL, it can be used as a cable replacement by transmitting input signals to a remote output over an IP or Ethernet network, the story said.
Hospitals are increasingly finding the advantages of transmitting information to patients via television, the story said, quoting research sources that claimed some viewers increased their knowledge of targeted subjects by 70 percent and "some viewers made changes to their lifestyles that benefited their health."
For more:
- HealthTech Zone has this story
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