Touchscreens and the NHS

Touchscreen devices have been around for over two decades now but it’s been the last two years or so that have seen a step change in the use of touchscreen elements as a key part of the human-machine interface. The introduction of the touchscreen phones/tablets and adoption by supermarkets of touchscreen self-checkouts has seen touchscreen devices becoming the norm. Touchscreens are a great way for customers and service users to interact with applications and this article shows some of the applications where the NHS are using touchscreens. Touchscreen devices come in a number of different types depending on their end-use. Portable devices such as PDA and Mobile Clinical Assistants use small screens, typically between 4 and 12 inches in size with resolutions of around 320x240, 640x480 and up to 1024x768. Larger touchscreen displays are implemented in the form of interactive digital signs and touchscreen kiosks which typically use screens of 19, 22 and 32 inch screens for the kiosks. Interactive digital signs may use larger screens of around 22, 32 or even 42in displays. There are a number of different types of touchscreen technologies and each has its own benefits. For larger displays the touchscreen technology is either very expensive or just unworkable and therefore larger displays typically use infrared touchscreens. Smaller devices may use resistive or projective capacitive touchscreens. Resistive touchscreens will work with finger touches as well as stylus and even gloved hands unlike capacitive which will require physical contact between the user and the touchscreen.