Orange has announced two new initiatives for the healthcare market. One is a multimedia terminal manufactured by Philips and the second is a service that uses Wi-Fi to keep track of hospital equipment and medicines. Both will be offered as part of Orange’s Connected Hospital, an interactive service targeted at healthcare establishments. The new Philips product, which is called CareServant, offers patients access to multimedia services as well as their own medical and educational information and content that can be tailored for a specific hospital. Among the product’s benefits say the companies is that patients can look at their medical records from their bedside so saving time for hospital staff. As well as cost savings, multimedia delivery of TV, radio, internet and games can be revenue generating services.

The second initiative provides Wi-Fi traceability so that medical equipment can be easily located in a hospital and protected from theft and damage, as well as being more cost-effectively deployed around the premises.  Using radio monitoring can also free up equipment more quickly and so reduce patient waiting times for treatment.  Medicines, for instance those products that need to be refrigerated, can be subject to monitoring via the service too.