Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust has announced that it will implement new MEDIVista bedside entertainment and education systems from Irish company Lincor Solutions.

The systems will provide entertainment including Freeview TV channels, internet, instant messaging, films, and radio. They will also allow the trust’s school to deliver its educational programmes to patients.

The first phase of the project, to mid 2010, will see 220 bedside systems deployed across the trust. These will be fixed to the bedside in order to reduce the risk of germs spreading from ward to ward by moving them around.

Peter Wollaston, head of corporate services at Great Ormond Street Hospital said: “The hospital has very good feedback from patients and parents with 94% of them saying they were very satisfied or satisfied with the care they receive.

"However some issues are persistently less satisfactory, with bedside entertainment being one of them.

“We need to ensure that children and young are entertained because boredom is a big issue for them. Also, for longer stay patients, we can work with our onsite school to keep up their education.”

MEDIVista is an digital 15” flat panel, touch screen system that includes a smart card reader and telephone handset.

It runs on its own independent network, including its own back-office management system, which can be linked to the hospital’s network and IT infrastructure via an IP connection.

The contract with Great Ormond Street includes the option to provide secure access to the trust’s hospital information system at a later date, which will provide clinicians with access to lab results, x-ray results and diagnostic reports at the point of care.

The company has already implemented the system at hospitals across France, Italy, Ireland, Holland, Malta, Canada and the US.

Link: Lincor Solutions