The waiting is over... Ex-cancer patient develops health education programme

March/April 2003: Medical waiting rooms are often a location for high levels of “downtime” –patients and support visitors can spend long stretches with little to occupy their interest. MedTV is about to change that.

Gabriella Larkin has a twenty-year background in communications, working in the UK, Holland, Australia and New Zealand as a media producer. It was her own experience as a cancer patient that led her to develop the MedTV concept.

“At first, all I ever did in waiting rooms was mentally switch into neutral and leaf through old magazines. After a while, I started to take my work in with me – I needed to feel productive and keep psyched about not letting my condition get the better of me. That’s when I realized there was a great opportunity here – what if there was a video programme dedicated to health education and prevention messaging, playing unobtrusively in the waiting room? While it was an opportunity for me to put my to skills to good use it was also a chance for the medical fraternity to show they were thinking about their patients even before they were called into the surgery.”

MedTV is a unique service, but the concept is very straightforward – it is a simple means of delivering useful and timely information to a large audience who, up until now, have been doing little more than killing time.

“You can’t underestimate the value of health education,” says Gabriella. “Whether you’re suffering from an injury or illness, or you’re close to someone who is, you develop a real hunger for knowledge – you suddenly want to know everything the doctors can tell you and often there just isn’t the time. In today’s screen focused culture we are so used to being educated via electronic media– whether it be televisions, computers or even our mobile technology – it’s all about information and education.”

Gabriella has designed MedTV as an in-house system – for now, playing down a “looped” sixty-minute presentation that is produced monthly. This highly effective presentation contains magazine-style editorial information on health related issues, advertisements and information on health products along with a few interludes of light entertainment.

Editorial content reinforces the Ministry of Health’s public health objectives as a national “donut” for the programme with regional “breakout versions” focussing on local DHB priorities. At practice level, the evolving PHO’s have an opportunity to utilize the MedTV service while larger medical centres have a chance to inform about the services and procedures particular to their facility.

“My goal was to create something useful to fill those waiting room stretches,” Gabriella says, “something that would lift people’s spirits by arming them with valuable information and hopefully answering a few questions.”

MedTV is the perfect tool for this – the Ministry of Health with the co-operation of the Counties-Manukau District Health Board in South Auckland evaluated the pilot programme in the field. With no shortage of practices keen to participate, the programme played only in the Manukau SuperClinic ^TM , the Mangere Health Centre and the Selwyn House Medical Centre in Howick. The resulting feedback was more than Gabriella hoped for.

“It confirms it’s appeal and it’s potential. Both health professionals and the public support the concept with almost 40% of those who watched the programme reporting they had learnt something new!”

Some technical issues were raised, “but nothing insurmountable,” says Gabriella, “We have a strong production team. Steve Kennedy our audio consultant is highly skilled in acoustic design and given the delicate balance between programme volume and environmental conditions this area has to be well managed. That’s why we take responsibility for the installation. It’s no good having a quality product if at the user end of the process the equipment installation let’s you down! MedTV has to work for everyone – the viewers, health professionals and reception staff.”

If you would like to know more about MedTV contact Gabriella Larkin via the website at www.medtv.co.nz or email to studio@medtv.co.nz

New Zealand Doctor March 2003 & NZ Business Advertorial April 2003