We know how hard it has been to not see family members, go shopping, fellowship over a meal, go to activities, or gather for chapel. We have worked hard to maintain relationships with those outside our campus. With the visitor and group restrictions, Resthaven has been intentionally investing in technology that can be used to engage residents with their community and each other.
SUNDAY SERVICES
Since we can no longer gather in the chapels on Sundays, we have been filming our church services. Chaplain Leigh Van Kempen records all services. Dietary Aide, Nancy Boden plays the piano for services. The services are played on the TVs in the hallways and in resident rooms to allow residents to worship on Sunday even while we cannot have a live service.
ACCUSHIELD
To help with the ever-changing required health screenings and to track people coming in and out of our buildings, Resthaven recently invested in a technology kiosk system called Accushield. Accushield is at each of our residence entrances for staff and visitors to sign in. This will ensure that all who are on our campuses have been screened. One special way this tool will help us better serve our residents is that it will help alert us in the future which residents may benefit from visitors. If a resident hasn’t had a visitor in a while, we will be able to reengage our volunteers in this way once we are permitted to have visitors.
IN2L
Another program we are excited for is IN2L. This program is a large touch screen designed to enhance person-centered engagement. The large screen is easy to see and has a clear image. It also allows for more staff engagement as staff may join the residents while the program is on the screen. It also has the capacity to do a two-way video call which opens many doors to bring live programs to our residents.
TOUCHTOWN
Touchtown is a communication tool to reach our residents in their room and in the lobbies of our buildings. Touchtown will have two pieces and we plan to launch it later this year. One is an in-room TV channel. This will allow us to stream the same info to a channel that can be accessed from each room. We can play the same video for everyone at once, place announcements on there such as activities schedule, and dining options. It will also serve as digital signs. These will allow us to display announcements, activities schedules, and dining meals that we can easily update and change content without changing out a physical bulletin board. These will also be visible in the lobby for visitors in the future.
UPDATED NETWORK
Resthaven has also invested grant funding into improving our network to accommodate increased network demands. With many residents a day on calls, staff working remotely, and more digital programing, this was a need that was quickly identified.