The Trust

The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (RFL) is one of the UK’s largest trusts, delivering care to more than 1.6 million patients each year. Having pioneered research and treatments since 1828, Royal Free is a leader in the provision of targeted cancer therapies and new surgical procedures.

Operating alongside Barnet Hospital and Chase Farm Hospital, The Royal Free Private Patients Unit was established in the 1980’s and offers a range of clinical services across multiple floors in London’s Hampstead area.

Wanting to meet the exacting expectations of a high profile, international private patient base (and dissatisfied with their incumbent provider) RFL asked Airwave to propose a cutting-edge patient entertainment system.

Key desirables in this instance included access to specific international (foreign language) channels and a BYOD (bring your own device) platform.

“Our project management expertise was almost as important a factor as the technology involved, on this occasion, we were required to carefully manage deployment of technology around patients, multiple floors and critical medical equipment.”

Jes Redgard, Head of Healthcare Sales, Airwave Healthcare

The Technology

Airwave Healthcare delivered a system from ‘roof to floor’ incorporating a 2.4m satellite dish, IPTV headend integration, internet capability and bandwidth for WiFi services, and a patient entertainment system via an Otrum CTRL interface implemented on Samsung and Philips SMART TVs.

The system implementation included healthcare articulated wall-arms for the specific requirements of the dialysis unit.

Working with the RFL’s IT network team, Airwave ensured that clinical systems’ bandwidth requirement was not impacted by the provision of additional  broadband, lease-line & internal network infrastructure to support the TV system.