Empowering Healthcare Communication with Digital Signage

How to Use Digital Signage to Create Engaging Healthcare Environments

Digital signage provides a great way for healthcare facilities to communicate and engage with both patients and staff. Digital displays can be easily used in waiting rooms, patient exam rooms, break rooms, or nurse stations. 

Here are just a few ways we’ve seen healthcare companies effectively use digital signage:

The flexibility of digital signage allows healthcare providers to use it in a variety of creative and innovative ways. Plus, the ability to update messaging in real-time enables agile communications, tailored to changing needs.

Here are a few ways you can set yourself up for success if you’re implementing (or optimizing) your digital signage strategy at a hospital, clinic, or healthcare campus.

Creating Engaging Content

Digital signage offers endless possibilities for creating engaging healthcare content that educates and informs your audience. The key is to mix different media formats to capture attention—and convey your message clearly.

When designing content, focus on visuals first: 

👀 Images and videos tend to attract more eyes than blocks of text. 

👀 Use large, high-quality photos and illustrations that align with your messaging. 

👀 Short animated clips can also quickly grab interest in waiting rooms.

👀 Balance visuals with brief snippets of text presented in easy-to-read segments. 

👀 Use bullet points, statistics, and quotes to break up paragraphs. 

👀 Avoid walls of text that are difficult to read on screens.

👀 Sprinkle in occasional animations, transitions, and movement to add energy. Subtle motions guide the eye and keep people focused. 

❌ But don’t overdo animated elements — too much movement can feel overwhelming or distracting.

Measure engagement with your signage and continually refine your content. Evaluate which visuals, messages, and designs resonate best with your viewers. Digital signage offers the flexibility to quickly adapt content as needed.

With a thoughtful strategy and creative mix of media, your signage screens can become vibrant communication hubs that inform (and inspire!) your audiences.

Automating Content Updates

One of the biggest headaches with managing signage is if current systems require manually updating content across multiple screens. If you have a number of displays in different areas it can become tedious to make changes screen-by-screen.

Healthcare facilities often have tight budgets and limited marketing resources, so they can’t afford to waste time pushing individual updates. Digital signage platforms like Skykit provide a huge time-saving advantage—allowing automatic content changes to all connected screens with just a click.

Once your displays are set up and connected to the platform, any updates made to playlists or content will instantly be pushed to every screen. This automation enables healthcare marketers to manage their digital signage networks efficiently, without excessive effort.

Rather than taking hours or days to update content across an entire hospital campus or clinic facility, digital signage platforms allow making quick changes. This significantly reduces the burden of content management, allowing healthcare marketers to focus their time on creating effective messaging—rather than manually maintaining screens.

With automated updates, digital signage platforms enable healthcare facilities to keep their screens fresh, engaging, and timely to better connect with patients and visitors.

Targeting Content by Location

One of the most useful features of digital signage for healthcare is the ability to target specific content to certain screens. Rather than displaying the same information everywhere, you can ensure that only relevant content shows in each location. 

With Skykit, this works through using labels to tag each display. For example, you may tag screens by department – naming them Pediatrics, Women’s Health, Orthopedics, etc.

When you upload a piece of content, you can specify which labeled screens it should play on. So a video about mammograms would be tagged for Women’s Health displays only. It would show only on those screens, while other areas see their own relevant content.

Labeling screens allows granular targeting of information down to the room level, if needed. A nurse could instantly swap content to show an educational video in Exam Room 2. After playing, it could automatically revert to the standard playlist of health tips, news, or even advertising.

With smart targeting, digital signage enables displaying custom content tailored to each department and situation. This prevents irrelevant information from showing in the wrong locations.

Real-Time Overrides for Situational Needs

Digital signage allows real-time overrides of content through simple software controls. Staff can instantly swap displayed media to temporary content for situational education and engagement.

This can be done by triggering pre-made playlists or launching individual videos/images.

For example, a pediatric nurse can log into the digital signage platform, select the display in a patient’s room, and launch a video on a procedure. After the video finishes, the screen automatically returns to the standard playlist. This on-demand flexibility allows staff to provide timely information without having to manually change inputs or displays.

The ability to override standard playlists with contextual content is extremely useful in patient care and education settings. Digital signage gives healthcare facilities this instant flexibility to tailor displays to situational needs.

Controlling Audio Settings

Unwanted audio playing throughout healthcare facilities can be incredibly disruptive to patients and staff. The sounds of videos, music, or announcements blaring in hallways and waiting areas should be avoided.

Thankfully, advanced digital signage solutions provide options to control audio settings precisely.

With the right digital signage platform, you can adjust audio on a per-screen basis. Settings can be configured to lower volume, mute sounds entirely, or only allow audio during certain hours.

For example, patient room displays may need sound disabled completely to avoid disturbances. Waiting room TVs could have volume lowered to a reasonable level. And hallway signs can be set to mute when night staff begin shifts.

Here are some tips to manage audio effectively, and prevent issues:

• Take inventory of all displays and think critically about ideal audio settings based on location, and hours of operation.
• Set explicit audio rules for each screen in your digital signage solution. Don’t rely on global defaults.
• Consider lowering volume substantially across all displays as a baseline. You can always increase later if needed.
• Use mute or volume minimums (like 5% max) for patient rooms, nursing stations, night shift areas, and other sensitive locations.
• Create an audio control checklist to re-validate settings whenever new displays are added or changes occur.

With strategic audio settings tailored for each display, you can present dynamic visual content without disruptive sounds in healthcare facilities. Patients, visitors, and staff will appreciate the peace and quiet.

Making the Right Choice: Consumer vs. Commercial Displays

When implementing digital signage in a healthcare environment, choosing the right displays is crucial. There are a few main options to consider.

Consumer TVs, like the ones you might have at home, may seem like an affordable option at first glance. However, they aren’t designed for the rigors and demands of 24/7 usage in public spaces. Consumer TVs typically have lower brightness, shorter lifespans, and limited warranties compared to commercial-grade options.

Commercial displays are engineered specifically for digital signage needs. They have professional-grade components and higher brightness ratings—allowing them to be clearly visible in bright waiting rooms and public areas. Commercial displays are also more durable and come with 3-year or longer warranties.

Display Recommendations for Healthcare Facilities

• Look for professional displays with at least 350-700 nits of brightness and built-in signage features like portrait orientation. 
• Proper placement is also key – avoid positioning displays in direct sunlight or high-glare areas when possible. Tilting mounts can help reduce glare and improve line of sight.

Choosing the right display hardware is critical for delivering impactful, readable digital signage content to patients and visitors.

Measuring Performance

Digital signage provides valuable analytics to help optimize content and engagement over time. Administrators can easily monitor important metrics across all screens in the network:

• Screen Uptime | Track overall uptime to ensure displays are powered on and operational as expected, and identify any problem areas.
• Content Playback | See details on which content is playing and for how long. Identify popular and evergreen pieces to feature. Find underperforming content to replace or remove.
• Interactions | For touchscreen displays, view usage data like number of taps, dwell time, and flow through content. Learn which interactive elements resonate best.

Analyzing performance data over time provides powerful insights to continuously optimize the digital signage experience. Content can be tailored based on usage patterns to better reach the intended audience and enhance patient experiences.

The Future of Digital Signage

The digital signage industry is rapidly changing with new innovations that will transform the patient and visitor experience. Here’s a glimpse at some of them:

Interactivity

Interactive signage allows audiences to engage directly with the screen. This opens up new ways to disseminate information and gather data.

For example, patients could check-in via a digital kiosk or access wayfinding assistance. Visitors might take a quick survey or look up physician information. Interactive screens create two-way communication channels to better serve audiences.

Personalization

With facial recognition and data integration, digital signage can deliver personalized content tailored to the viewer.

As patients or visitors approach a screen, it could display customized information relevant to that individual. 

Mobile Integration

Mobile devices will become increasingly integrated with digital signage. Signage could detect nearby mobile users and send related content to their phone or tablet—allowing the experience to continue across screens. People could also use their mobile device to interact with a signage display.

Analytics

More sophisticated analytics will reveal deeper insights into audience behavior. Detailed metrics around engagement, dwell time, interactivity, and more will help optimize content. Analytics allow digital signage to become even more targeted and effective.

The healthcare industry is just starting to tap into the capabilities of advanced digital signage.

As the technology evolves, it will enable providers to better inform, assist, and connect with patients and visitors. The future looks bright for innovative signage solutions!