Milner-Fenwick has launched HealthClips, a new digital video library that expands the continuum of care and tailors education to each patient’s needs and circumstances.

“Anywhere patients have a digital connection, educators now have the ability to select relevant clips to enhance their care,” says David Milner, Milner-Fenwick President. “This may be at bedside, in a provider’s office, or at home before or after treatment.”

“We believe this gives patients a greater opportunity to view information at the most appropriate times. It also allows them to share important information much more easily with their families and caregivers.”

What makes this possible is video streaming from any health provider’s website, prescriptive use through in-facility on-demand systems, and delivery through a facility’s intranet.

“Anywhere patients have a digital connection, educators now have the ability to select relevant clips to enhance their care,”

It’s not just new delivery options but a different approach to content as well. Each video clip averages only 3 minutes, ideal for better retention of information and for targeting specific learning objectives of individual patients.

HealthClips includes over 300 videos clips in cardiology, diabetes, wellness, and asthma. There are over 12 hours of programming and active plans for other areas of care.

Expanding the continuum of care

As a digital resource, HealthClips can be shared with patients anywhere and at any stage of treatment – upon diagnosis, in preparation for scheduled treatment, during hospitalization, at discharge, during recovery, or through long-term maintenance.

With a variety of in-facility delivery methods and the web for home viewing, educators now have a way to provide consistent messages throughout the treatment process. This is a far cry from carting a VCR from room to room which had limited success and was a burden on busy nurses.

“We believe this gives patients a greater opportunity to view information at the most appropriate times."

According to Milner, “Educators can link several clips together for a particular patient. If a cardiac rehab patient has just been diagnosed with diabetes, a prescription can be tailored to that circumstance. The shorter length of each clip keeps the scope focused without overwhelming the patient. And if a patient is too ill in the hospital, they can view the clips when they’re feeling better at home.”

Making the web safer for patients

According to the Pew Internet Project’s 2007 national survey, 75 percent of internet users use the internet to look for health or medical information.

And the U.S. National Institutes of Health warns, “There are thousands of health-related websites on the Internet. Some of the information on these websites is reliable and can be trusted. Some of it is not…There are websites on nearly every conceivable health topic and no rules overseeing the quality of the information.”

This means that if health providers don’t provide reliable and accessible web resources to patients, they will go elsewhere looking for them.

Milner says, “With this obvious trend, we saw HealthClips as a trusted resource that a facility could confidently put on their website. After all, we’ve been providing content to hospitals and other healthcare providers for over 30 years. HealthClips takes what we’ve been doing in the past and, with digital technology and web delivery, opens up new possibilities for the 21st century.”

Content is king

An overriding consideration is that presentations must be compelling. If they aren’t, nurses won’t use them and patients will tune them out.

“A lot of video content on the web is a series of talking head experts which is boring and simply not an effective teaching tool,” says Milner. “Our approach is radically different with the use of animation, patients sharing experiences viewers can relate to, and patients modeling healthy behaviors.”

With shorter hospital stays, accreditation requirements, and workload issues for nurses, HealthClips is a new tool to enhance treatment and the quality of care.

Here’s a sample clip