The Cloud Deploy FREE Wireless Internet in Welsh Hospitals

Public WiFi Hotspot operator The Cloud (BSkyB) has entered into a new partnership with the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board (ABM) that has already resulted in a free wireless internet service being deployed across several of the groups hospitals in Wales.

The service should allow patients / visitors to use mobile devices to surf the web and clinicians will also gain access to Internet resources at the bedside. Apparently the roll-out cost is being paid for by reinvesting some of the savings made by ABM’s ICT department.

Carl Mustad, ABM’s Head of ICT Operations, said:

“The roll out was completed very recently and more than 7,000 people were using the service on the first six days, spending a total of 1.5 million minutes online. We chose The Cloud because it’s a respected and well-established WiFi provider offering a service our patients know and trust.

We hope that having this offering in place will improve the quality of their time in hospital – letting them surf the web but also providing opportunities for us to gain valuable patient feedback to improve our service even further in the future.”

Now if only more hospitals would introduce this instead of forcing patients to either pay through the nose or worse, refusing to offer any form of Internet access.