Fairchild AFB Pharmacy Sets the Standard for Customer Service
It looks like the Pharmacy at Fairchild AFB in Washington will continue to set the standard for customer service by leveraging the power of the internet to better serve their military community.
They recently purchased a new TIPS2000 touchscreen information kiosk, which will be installed at the Hospital in Building 9000. The system is provided by DynaTouch Corporation, the San Antonio-based company that has been supplying touchscreen kiosks to DoD for over 10 years. With over 600 units in operation at military installations worldwide, the DynaTouch kiosks have a proven track record as being an extremely effective utilization of technology to enhance customer service and reduce administrative burden. The predominant use of the kiosks will be to act as a point of information for visitors as well as patients.
“Our visitors will now be able to access the Internet, view a comprehensive multimedia presentation of ConsumerHealthTIPS™, MICROMEDEX, PEI (Patient Education Institute) software, print detailed maps with directions, hours and phone numbers for support facilities and services, and obtain other helpful information about the local community – all via the kiosks!” says MSgt Bryan Langerud, NCOIC.
ConsumerHealthTIPS™, when fully implemented by a facility, will provide patients the ability to access information in English and Spanish regarding medications and conditions, look for possible medication interactions, visually identify their medications, learn about alternative care medications, and view multimedia health topics – all provided by healthcare industry leaders. Patients are also able to give confidential feedback to the kiosk sponsor. Access is included to many leading Internet-based health web sites, such as Healthfinder.gov, Consumer.gov, MedicineNet.com, WebMD, and others. Jim Karlak, CEO of DynaTouch Corporation points out, “While a few healthcare organizations are trying to bring the Web to their patients using kiosks, we’re taking a much more dynamic approach. By providing information both locally and on the Internet, we are not limiting our customers choices to an Internet-only, or kiosk database only solution. In discussions with our customers, we are aware that many of our customers in the military and VA sometimes have difficulty obtaining access to the Internet, while our commercial customers are very excited to offer health information databases coupled with controlled Internet access.” Each customer facility can also choose from several standard and custom upgrades such as on-line prescription refills, appointment lookups, knowledge couplers, building and local area wayfinding, and custom content about their facility or organization.
ConsumerHealthTIPS™ has been designed to provide the most comprehensive information available to consumers – meaning it is easy to read and understand. Because DynaTouch has been providing kiosk solutions for 15 years, the reliability and usability of the systems are virtually guaranteed. “We have developed the expertise over the years to understand what works via the kiosk and what doesn’t. Working with our customers’ end users has provided us a unique insight in how people best interact with the kiosk, giving us what we feel is an edge over those companies less experienced or more concerned in just providing a kiosk to access the Internet only.” – Terri McClelland, Executive Vice President, DynaTouch Corporation.
After months of research, MICROMEDEX, a division of Thomson Healthcare, was chosen to provide a suite of healthcare and medication databases. Available via the kiosk are databases of general and detailed information for prescribed, OTC, and alternative care medications, interactions for prescription and alternative care medications, a host of disease and condition information, plus the ability to visually identify your medications. “DynaTouch has taken a unique approach in that they are offering just about all of our available consumer health topics to their customers. As a well-established kiosk solution provider, they already had the basic infrastructure available to easily integrate the MICROMEDEX databases. We have a lot of synergy working together – it’s a nice fit.” – Janet Bender, Strategic Accounts, MICROMEDEX – Thomson Healthcare.
DynaTouch’s customer feedback lead to the selection of The Patient Education Institute (PEI) for providing a unique, multimedia patient education component to ConsumerHealthTIPS™. PEI offers hundreds of topics ranging from pre-operative and surgical procedures to basic health promotion. PEI’s complete X-Plain™ Health Promotion™ library is included with every ConsumerHealthTIPS™ kiosk, providing 5 to 10 minute multimedia health promotion overviews for such topics as How to Prevent Back Pain, How to Prevent Cancer Through Early Screening and Healthy Life Habits, Hypertension, Managing Cholesterol, and others. All of PEI’s additional libraries are available for inclusion with ConsumerHealthTIPS™, including Anesthesiology, Cardiology, Diabetes, General Surgery, OB/Gyn, Oncology, and more. Dr. Ajam, Director of the Patient Education Institute, states, “A successful health information kiosk relies on offering five elements: reliable hardware, simple interface, up-to-date comprehensive content, an engaging user’s experience, and maintenance service. We are excited about integrating our multimedia patient education, X-Plain™, with DynaTouch’s ConsumerHealthTIPS™ because it satisfactory meets all of the requirements for a successful health information kiosk. In addition, ConsumerHealthTIPS™ complements X-Plain’s philosophy of providing quality health information that reaches the widest possible audience.”
One important point is that the TIPS2000 kiosk not only provides information, but collects it as well. Usage statistics are being recorded with every touch. There is also a powerful customer feedback survey on the kiosk. “We can let the kiosk ask our visitors and patients questions, then we’ll be able to retrieve the answers via the Internet whenever we want.” Usage statistics reports can also be retrieved via the Internet, allowing you to measure the effectiveness of the kiosk.
One of the most welcomed changes with TIPS2000 is that DynaTouch can update the kiosk via the Internet for this location, whenever they need help. The Internet, without a doubt, continues to change the way we all do business.
