Jen-Ai Hospital: Tali Introduces Baby Photo Messaging Service
(MMS)
2005/06/15
BY MARK K. CHAN
TAICHUNG, JEN-AI HOSPITAL: TALI
While picking up her daughter, Kathryn, at the local kindergarten,
Rayne Soret's camera phone made a beeping sound, indicating
that she had just received a Multimedia Messaging Service
(MMS) message. "Oh my! Heather has just delivered her
baby! Doesn't the baby look so adorable?," Rayne showed
the picture to her husband, Kevin. "Isn't it amazing
what cell phones can do, nowadays?" Yes, indeed.
The MMS message that she had just received featured a
photo of the newborn baby, a few minutes after he was
born, with the following text attached, "This is
Jen-Ai Hospital Baby Photo Messaging Service! Please welcome
Heather & Ciro Correia's newborn baby, Dylan Connor
Amandio Correia! If you would like to send them an E-card,
please go to: http://www.jah.org.tw/english/ecard.asp
or please visit us at: http://baby.jah.org.tw/webnursery/english.asp
for additional photos, in the next few days."
Jen-Ai Hospital in Taichung County, Taiwan is claiming
to be the first hospital in the world to introduce this
free service to all parents who have their baby at the
hospital. Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year,
the county hospital is looking for new and innovative
ways of reinventing itself by offering services that are
not yet available in hospitals from other parts of the
world.
Mark K. Chan, Program Director of Jen-Ai Hospital International
Patient Center (JAH IPC), explains, "We were the
first hospital in Taiwan to offer our Baby Web Nursery service,
more than 2 years ago, where a webpage with basic information
and picture of the baby is uploaded onto our hospital
website within 72 hours of the birth. But after many hospitals
in Taiwan started to offer this service and receiving
several requests to create the webpage 'as soon as possible'
(and we were able to cut the time down to less than 1
hour), I started thinking that there must be a faster
way to send a photo of the baby to friends and family
members. And the solution was - MMS messages sent by camera
phones."
Chan adds, "Before this project was implemented,
friends and family members needed to wait and visit our
hospital website to see the baby's picture, but with the
MMS message, they can now see the photo almost instantly.
With more and more people owning a camera phone with MMS
function, the time is right to launch this project, so
that it will encourage other hospitals in the U.S., Europe
and Asia regions to offer this kind of free service to
all parents who have a camera phone in their respective
countries. But for parents who don't own a camera phone,
we offer yet another service, where the baby announcement
is sent via SMS text messages. All of these services are
available, after obtaining the informed consent forms
from the parents."
Designating the 24-hour English Information Hotline
number to the picture phone, the International Patient
Center (IPC) has been utilizing its mobile phone by taking
advantage of other functions such as the Short Messaging
Service (SMS) text messages in taking appointment requests,
sending confirmations and reminding international patients
about their medical appointments. Even telephone interpretation
by 3-way calling and conference calls has been arranged
for urgent situations or emergencies.
IPC is also exploring other usages of the MMS functions
that have been employed in other countries, like the U.S.,
U.K., Denmark and Japan, where pictures of X-rays, CT,
MRI scans, injuries caused by car accidents, etc. are
taken by camera phones and sent to specialists in the
Radiology or Emergency Departments for their professional
opinion. In fact, IPC has received MMS messages from its
foreign patients with photos of skin rashes, cuts and
bruises, for second opinion from doctors in the Dermatology
and Plastic Surgery Departments.
According to BBC, it was estimated that by the end
of 2004, worldwide camera phone sales reached 159 million,
with mobile phones with built-in camera projected to take
up to 70% of the global handset market in 2008. And in
Taiwan, DigiTimes predicts that 7 million mobile phones
are expected to be sold by the end of this year, with
more than half being camera phones. With the advancement
of mobile phone technology, including image resolution
of more than 5 mega-pixels, faster data transfer, bigger
storage capacity, higher zoom capability, etc., various
usages, especially in the healthcare setting, is anticipated
in the near future. |