# Digital signage for healthcare and hospitals Running reception boards, department directories, visiting hours, corridor directions and staff notices on screens in a clinic or hospital, played from the screen's own browser and edited from a phone. Source: https://channelos.tv/industries/healthcare ## What runs it ChannelOS plays as a web page in the browser the screen already has: Android TV, Google TV, webOS, Fire TV, a Chromebox, or a laptop in kiosk mode on the HDMI port. There is also a native Android TV app, downloaded as an APK from channelos.tv rather than from Google Play. There is no media player box to buy and no per-device licence. ## What goes on the screen - **Reception and department boards.** Which clinic is in which room today, who is covering, when the pharmacy window closes. The board is a real editable show, so changing a name is an edit, not a rebuild. - **Visiting hours and ward notices.** The notice that changes four times a year and is wrong for three of them. Put it on a channel and it changes everywhere the moment you change it once. - **Corridor directions.** Arrows, floor numbers and department names, drawn at a size that reads from the far end of a corridor. Portrait screens are a first-class shape, not a rotated afterthought. - **Staff-side boards in back areas.** Hand-hygiene reminders, rota changes, the number for the on-call. A staff corridor screen and a public one can run completely different channels from the same account. ## When ChannelOS is the wrong answer ChannelOS is not a clinical system and must not be used as one. It does not call patients, it does not show queue positions or names, and it has no integration with a PAS, an EPR or an appointment system, so nothing on a ChannelOS screen can be trusted to reflect who is next. If the screen's job is calling patients through, buy a queue-management product built for that. If the job is a corridor that says what is where and a reception board that is actually current, this is the lighter answer. Anything a ChannelOS screen shows is something a person typed. ## Questions ### What is digital signage for healthcare? Healthcare digital signage means running reception boards, department directories, visiting hours, corridor directions and staff notices on screens instead of printed signs and laminated A4. In ChannelOS each board is a real editable show: every heading, name and time is its own selectable element, and the screen plays it from the browser already built into the display, so correcting a clinic time is an edit rather than a reprint and a walk round the building. ### Can a clinic screen show patient names or queue numbers? No, and it should not. ChannelOS has no connection to any patient administration or appointment system, so a number on a ChannelOS screen would be a number somebody typed, which is exactly the kind of thing that goes stale and gets believed anyway. Our waiting room guidance says the same thing in full: no queue numbers, no patient names, no treatment claims. For calling patients through, buy a queue-management system. ### Do we need a media player behind every hospital screen? No. ChannelOS plays as a web page in the browser the screen already has, which covers Android TV, Google TV, webOS and Fire TV, plus any Chromebox or laptop already driving a display over HDMI. There is also a native Android TV app if you would rather install something, downloaded as an APK from our own site rather than from Google Play. Nothing is sideloaded, nothing is licensed per device, and a screen is paired by opening the player URL on it and scanning the code it shows with a phone. ### Can different screens in the same building show different things? Yes, and that is the normal arrangement. Screens tune into a channel, which is a named feed with its own daily and weekly timeline, so the public corridor runs one channel while the staff room runs another and the pharmacy window runs a third. One account holds all of them and the board shows you what each one is playing right now. ### Who in a practice can actually change the screen? Whoever has the login, from whatever they have on them. The editor has a real phone build rather than a shrunken desktop one, so a practice manager can fix a wrong clinic time on a phone between appointments, and the AI assistant will draft or reword a board if the shape of it is the hard part. The change reaches the screens in seconds because a screen derives what it shows from the schedule in real time, so there is no publish step to forget. ### How much does healthcare digital signage cost? The first screen is free forever and further screens are billed per screen per month, with current rates on the pricing page. Free screens carry a ChannelOS banner that opens into a full ChannelOS slide roughly every two minutes; any paid plan removes both, which for a public-facing clinic corridor is usually the reason to pay. There is no player device to buy and no per-device licence, so the hardware cost is the screens you already have. ## Related - [Waiting room TV](https://channelos.tv/waiting-room-tv): What earns a place on a waiting room screen, and the list of what must never go on one. - [A realistic waiting room rotation](https://channelos.tv/blog/waiting-room-tv-slideshow): How long a slide should hold, and why a news feed is the wrong filler. - [Portrait screens](https://channelos.tv/blog/portrait-digital-signage-tv): Hanging a TV sideways for a corridor, and designing for the shape rather than rotating a 16:9 board. - [Why there is no player box](https://channelos.tv/blog/no-media-player-required): What the screen's own browser already does, and what a signage appliance was buying you.