Patients' patience reaches breaking point

I've been meaning to write about Patientline for a while. In fact, I suspect I blogged about it around a year or so ago (when there was an ESRC workshop on accessibility at the University of Reading, at which I raised the matter of its poor user interface). Or maybe it was one of those blogs that never got written.

Anyway. Patientline - a bedside unit that allows hospital in-patients to access phone, radio, TV and Internet - finally hit the headlines this month.

"Hospital patients forced to watch TV they can't switch off", roared The Guardian.
"NHS patients forced to watch all-day TV," stormed The Times.
And in a Guardian follow-up, "Letters flood in over NHS TV set row."

In summary, Patientline 1.0 has no off switch, so patients had to resort to turning the screen to face the wall to get away from the thing.

This is one of many issues with Patientline. Another is the high cost to patients - recent hospital visitors will have noticed the large vending units in ward blocks, selling Patientline access cards for significant amounts of money - and the consequent digital divide issues: only the wealthy can watch TV, surf the Internet or make phone calls? Incoming calls are apparently charged at premium rates too.

An alternative system developed at Brunel University - research council funded and using user-centred design principles, whose designers spoke at the above-mentioned workshop - finds it hard to compete with the likes of Patientline. Why? Because outfits like Patientline provide NHS trusts with a turnkey 'solution': no monetary commitment, everything paid for by the company. You can almost hear the Trust chairman breathing a sigh of relief at the knowledge that his cheque book can stay firmly in his pocket.

We still don't have any standard that says systems in public hospitals have to jump through a usability or accessibility hoop, more's the pity.

As one commentator put it, "On several occasions I was minded to rip the device from the wall and throw it out of the window. I now wish I had."