Freestanding Kiosks with Lightbox 3 – Royal London Hospital

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Lightbox is one of the most intuitive pieces of software I have ever used… Since we launched the units at the hospital in February, the feedback on the look and feel of the units and their content has been brilliant, and we are delighted to have had the support of Blackbox-av in giving patients and visitors a new way of exploring the hospital’s history while they wait for appointments.

– Kate Jarman, Trust Archivist at Barts Health NHS Trust

Meeting at Royal Hospital London

Serving the people of London since the mid 18th century, The Royal London Hospital is a place steeped in history while being both the UK’s busiest trauma centre and internationally renowned teaching hospital. In an effort to bring some of that history to life for patients, a truly unique archival project was launched by the Barts Health NHS Trust Archives team. Kate Jarman who lead the program explains below;

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Our project, to develop and install interactive digital heritage units in waiting areas at the Royal London Hospital, and ‘Bring the Collections Closer’ to patients served by the hospital trust, was uncharted territory for Barts Health NHS Trust Archives.

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It was a co-curation project, working with a group of Community Curators – local residents, and current and former staff and patients of the hospital, who worked with us to find new stories to tell from the historic collections of the Royal London Hospital, and whose own stories and connections we wanted to share too.

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We had also never produced a digital resource of this kind. Making the content of the units as inclusive and easy to use as possible was a priority and we initially chose to work with Blackbox-av because of the easy-to-use multiple language functionality in their Lightbox 3 software. We were delighted at the support we had from Rhys in the design team to develop the structure we wanted for the content, and from Tim in the development team, who made updates to ensure that the software had all the features we were looking for.

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Lightbox is really easy to use, one of the most intuitive pieces of software I have ever used, which meant that we were able to make the edits we needed until we had the content looking exactly how we wanted it.

You can see the software in action here;

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Since we launched the units at the hospital in February, the feedback on the look and feel of the units and their content has been brilliant, and we are delighted to have had the support of Blackbox-av in giving patients and visitors a new way of exploring the hospital’s history while they wait for appointments.

The use of Lightbox 3 ultimate package alongside our 22″ Free Standing Kiosks allowed the creation of a truly expansive and engaging interactive experience for visitors. Each item presented is accompanied by an explanation of what the item is as well as why it has been chosen by the individual. Alongside this are the various ‘Game’ applications such as Quiz, Puzzle, Pairs or Match which are used to add little fun elements throughout the archive.

It not only gives patients something to do while they wait but really highlights the deep history of The Royal London Hospital as well as the progress of public medicine itself.