Sheffield Children's Hospital offers free web access

Patients can use the internet, make phone calls and watch TV for free via bedside units

Children at the Sheffield hospital now have multimedia bedside units

Sheffield Children’s Hospital is offering a bedside service that allows children to browse the web for free.

The hospital started trialling the system, which also allows patients to make phone calls and watch TV, last November in one ward and will aim to roll out the technology across other three wards in the next eight months.

“The children absolutely love it,” said the hospital’s head of information management and technology Russell Banks.

“We’re still looking into how to make the service as cost-effective as possible and how to integrate the children’s phone service with our internal clinical calls,” he said.

“But this has been a very successful experience. It is great that we can make our kids as happy as possible throughout their stay in hospital.”

A firewall has been put in place as well as access restrictions to ensure safe browsing.

“At the moment, the kids can only access a very short list of web sites,” said Banks.

“But we are looking into ways to make browsing useful, such as educational and activity tools online for children.

“We are also introducing more learning programmes onto the TVs to make sure the patients are getting a good balance between entertainment and education,” he said.

Supplier ANS Group has provided the IP telephony structure for the project.