Health IT, Hospitals

Panasonic, Cisco will deliver a patient education offering in the coming weeks

Can big players like Cisco and Panasonic deliver health education in a way that makes patients healthier? Panasonic was talking at HIMSS 2015 about an almost-ready project that will combine big tech and big networking.

Panasonic and Cisco are at HIMSS 2015 this week showcasing an almost-ready “patient media experience.” The companies are betting that big tech and big networking are the keys to delivering health education that will keep patients out of the hospital.

In concept, Panasonic will use Cisco’s networking prowess to deliver video through Panasonic devices from the moment patients enter a hospital to when they get out of their beds.

Video-driven wayfinding services will guide a patient to where they need to go. Once in a hospital bed, the television screen provides everything from educational videos to a list of goals that can be checked off as they are met. Medical staff members can also send messages and add new videos, goals and other information.

In the coming weeks, the two companies will ink a deal with a business that provides health education videos, completing the agreements they need to launch the program.

Cisco and Panasonic currently have one pilot running with a soon-to-be-announced partner in Dallas. They expect to add new beta users this quarter and spend the next year landing customers.

Throw a rock at a hospital conference you’ll hit at least three vendors offering health education services guaranteed to cut re-admission rates. But most of them them are either smaller, scrappier players or content-first companies (think PatientPoint, Staywell or SONIFI Health). They aren’t large, lumbering mega-companies like Cisco or Panasonic.

Panasonic executives said that’s the point: without being fully-connected through a hospital you’re less-likely to be effective in educating  patients to change their behavior and delivering services that make hospital stays better.

“Everyone talks about connected healthcare, but taking it from concept to deliverable and making it deployable – that couldn’t be done without Cisco’s help,” said Jamil King, national sales manager at Panasonic.

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