This chapter examines the recent rise in the adoption and spread of kiosks in UK healthcare: The leading players in the healthcare market, their technologies, the main uses of the kiosks and software, including possible future developments into clinical care.
TopDispensing
Intouch with Health Ltd has specialised in producing a comprehensive hosted web service that can be delivered to its own or other vendors’ kiosks in a wide range of languages that offers the patient a public health information service on a touchscreen. The information has been validated by the Department of Health and the Intouch with Health Public Health Information Service is now in over 70 NHS Trusts in the UK. Logica is deploying four NCR touchscreen kiosks with the Intouch with Health Public Health Information Service on them at the City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust. This is an example of public health information ‘dispensing’ with patients empowered to surf the web service while awaiting their clinic appointment, and enabled to print out an ‘information prescription’ about their condition to read in preparation for their clinic appointment. The hope is that this will lead to a more interactive consultation with the doctor or nurse and a more informed patient.
However, kiosks can also dispense other types of goods and services, other than pure information. In the banking sector, this is evidently cash and account statements, in healthcare this can be discharge medications, or even prostheses or dressings, if they are integrated to ‘robot pickers’.
City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust has just installed a ‘robot picker’ into its out-patient department for the purpose of dispensing out-patient medications to patients. When married to a kiosk such a ‘robot picker’ can automatically dispense discharge medications on presentation by the patient of a barcoded prescription, code, PIN or token, or, indeed, payment.