It’s easy to see how the many benefits of digital signage can impact industries like retail — greater engagement with advertising can boost sales and prolong customer’s time in stores, and digital displays can even help spark impromptu purchases. It should come as no surprise, but retail isn’t the only industry that’s being transformed by digital signage.

When it comes to the healthcare industry, digital displays and kiosks offer countless advantages to patients, visitors, and employees alike.

Healthcare providers have found great success in utilizing digital signage for everything, from information distribution and emergency response to advertising and donor recognition. Here are just a few of the most impactful benefits of digital signage in the healthcare industry.

1. Patient Experience

Digital signage in patient rooms provides a wealth of benefits to both doctors and patients. Bedside displays help doctors provide superior patient education via on-screen information like test results and treatment plans, and even provides patients with better understandings of procedures through the use of various forms of digital signage content, like video.

This empowers patients to make the best decisions for their health and even lowers readmission, according to an article by Samsung. In addition, digital signage can offer up-to-the-minute information about the patient, outclassing the traditional white board, which needs consistent and time-consuming updating.

2. Wayfinding

Navigating the labyrinthine halls of modern healthcare facilities can be frustrating for many visitors and patients, especially given the often high-stress nature of the environment. Interactive digital wayfinding displays or kiosks can help easily guide these guests to their destinations by providing step-by-step directions. Some displays and kiosks can even send the information directly to the user’s smartphone. This helps improve visitor and patient experience, lower anxiety, and mitigate wayfinding interruptions to staff.

3. Wait Times

Few things are worse than being asked to sit and wait for care when you’re sick or injured. Luckily, digital signage can have massive positive effects on patients’ or visitors’ waiting room experiences.

According to Digital Signage Today, digital displays with queue management can reduce perceived wait times by up to 35%. On top of that, digital signage can provide a variety of other benefits to those in the waiting room, including entertainment and distribution of news, tips, updates, or advisories. This can also help mitigate the need for handouts and other paper materials that must be given out.

4.  Patient and Visitor Perception

We should never underestimate the power of a first impression. For many people, entering a hospital, physician’s office, or treatment facility can be a nerve-racking experience. Digital signage can help give guests peace of mind about the service they’re going to receive and improve their overall experience by presenting the facility as state-of-the-art.

Self-service kiosks, digital displays with health-related news and updates, and wayfinding stations all work together to create a professional and well-connected persona for the healthcare facility, which can reassure visitors or patients that they are in capable hands.

5. Staff Communication

For many healthcare environments, especially hospitals, the distribution of important information can be a challenge. Digital signage offers a simple and effective way for these facilities to ensure that messages like updated policies, emergency notifications, new treatment information, and upcoming continuing education opportunities are widely and evenly distributed to staff members, even across multiple campuses.

Digital signage also offers the opportunity to update these notifications as needed. On top of that, digital displays provide the same opportunities for entertainment to the staff as they do to patients and visitors.

Digital signage isn’t simply about increasing sales or driving foot traffic — it helps people find their way, provides opportunities for better education, and even helps those stuck in a waiting room pass the time. With the many impactful benefits of digital signage, it’s easy to understand why those in the healthcare industry are turning to digital signage to improve the experiences of their patients, visitors, and staff members.

If you are considering implementing digital signage in your business, take the first step towards deployment by learning what questions to ask and how to make the right choices from the start.