August 21, 2020 – Baptist Health (Little Rock, AR) is installing 432 Amazon Echo Show devices in potential COVID-19 patient rooms at nine of the healthcare system’s hospitals to offer a new and improved way that clinicians can visit with their patients through video communication.
Echo Show devices and deployment support are being donated by Amazon as part of its $5 million global initiative to help healthcare workers, patients, students and communities impacted by COVID‑19.
Baptist Health will be deploying these to units across the system that have the potential to have COVID-19 patients, which includes ICU areas, med-surg floors, emergency departments and labor and delivery rooms.
The devices feature a speaker for two-way communication plus an 8-inch touch-screen display. The “Drop In” feature allows physicians, nurses, therapists and other clinicians to visit a patient’s room virtually. This allows caregivers to see the patient more frequently without having to go through the process of putting on personal protective equipment each time, which in turn also preserves PPE and adds a layer of safety for the staff.
