In marketing, everyone knows that nothing captures someone’s attention more than hearing or seeing their own name – the Cocktail Party Effect. The cocktail party effect is “the phenomenon of being able to focus one’s auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, much the same way that a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room.”¹ Studies have showed the same is true for visual references, such as your name, picture or relevant information.

In the hospital, there is a lot to distract a patient – general hospital noises, family members and visitors, nurses, physicians and other clinical staff, results of their condition, such as pain or uncomfortable medical equipment, fear, etc. It is hard to get a patient to stop and listen to get a message across.

There are many ways eVideon™ enhances your hospital efforts to achieve greater interactive patient care, and one simple way is by displaying the patient’s name on their television. When they first turn on their TV, they automatically are drawn to the time-of-day, personalized greeting. For example, "Good Afternoon, Rebecca." The greeting can even by changed by the nurse to a patient’s preferred name, such as William to Bill or Cassandra to Cassie.

But how does this help the hospital interact with the patient? With eVideon™, patients can do so much more than just watch high-quality HD television. They can see pictures and bios of their care team, make non-clinical service requests, such as a chaplain’s visit or clean sheets, learn about their condition and recovery, watch hospital-produced videos and learn more about hospital services.The possibilities are endless.

Communications and interactivity is greatly enhanced by allowing the patient to do so directly through their television with their pillow speaker. For patients who are either shy or just do not want to bother the staff (no matter how helpful they are); the ability to make requests and communicate without needing to push the Nurse Call Button is greatly appreciated.

By simply displaying the patient’s name on the television screen, the hospital has made another connection with the patient and captured their attention to do more with their television than just watch The Price is Right. One more block towards building the tower of Interactive patient care.

¹Bronkhorst, Adelbert W. (2000). “The Cocktail Party Phenomenon: A Review on Speech Intelligibility in Multiple-Talker Conditions” (pdf). Acta Acustica united with Acustica 86: 117–128.