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Radio Heatherwood Text Service

Text Message Service That Never Was!

Text Message Requests

In early April 2007 a message was posted on the bulletin board for staff to vote on whether they thought it was good idea to investigate the development of text service to the Radio. A positive response from the majority staff set the wheels in motion over the next few months to move it forward.

Engineers Reply:-

Thanks to all those who have voted and commented. I have closed the poll and you can see the results.

We need to identify here currently what's happening and what the likely out comes are.

Category 1 Patient

The patient has the terminal above the bed but as we all know it's the cost of the calls and also not knowing how to use or no headphones etc. When Den was in ward 4 last year she noticed that the majority of patients did have there own mobile phones and were secretly texting their relatives. Rightly or wrongly.

Category 2 Visitor/Friend/Family

Unless the patient has been listening, the relatives would more than likely try and put some money on their cards either for the phone or the TV. If our screen saver was the correct size on the terminals and they were listening and saw our telephone number, yes you could receive a phone call.

Category 3 Staff

All staff have mobiles and will often make requests for songs if you ask them.

Category 4 On-line request Form.

This is more geared to those who are Internet aware and maybe not able to visit when one of their family is in the hospital. As has been born out by the majority of these coming from a long way across the pond etc.

To make this this work as in making all of the above aware. We would need to have promo's going out leaflets carrying the text number and also lots of promotion on the web sites etc.

The technical aspect is as follows:_

In a nutshell a text message arriving on the mobile attached to the engineering PC would then send a standard automated reply to the sender. The PC would then send the message to every PC in the studio with a pop up screen detailing the message.

Software and hardware to complete this would be no more than £50.Text service £25 per year to have a shared short code IE text rhapsody to 603800 and your message.

Pay as you go phone top up every six months cost subject to text message receipts.

Hospital Changes

Delaying until we know what happens to us here at Heatherwood ?

David and I have had 27 years of if's and but's the only way we can move forward is not let the negatives stop our development.

This is what we know at the moment, this isn't going to happen over night and I have a considerable amount of work to do to get this in place tested and some training notes devised for one and all plus the promotion etc.

It's really going to be an ongoing project that I will devote time too, as and when I can.

Hope this allays some queries, you all might have.

After some months of investigation and testing of items and changes to our original plan a new briefing on the progress was given to staff.

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Staff Briefing 24.7.2007

Text For The Radio

As you know some months ago we muted the idea of offering text service for patients/friends and their families.

When I looked into the various options it was looking most favourable for us to opt for the short code route and we purchased a short code of “HWD” but this would meant we would have had to reverse charge the sender costing them 35p for each text. Whilst I wasn't happy with this it did give us a number of options with notification to team leaders and emails to whoever to let us know when messages had been received.

All the promo posters and leaflets were designed around the short code option and were ready to roll.

What Happened?.

When you receive a text on your phone it is handled by a modem called a GSM modem which is all part of your phone. As part of my research I did look at buying a GSM modem which can be connected to your pc but you still need a mobile phone network supplier.

Text messages are in essence called SMS messages. I was aware that you could receive sms messages on your ordinary telephone line at home as BT have a service originally called busy line. Now (BTTEXT). I was looking on the internet for something totally unrelated when I saw an advert for an sms modem to be used on your BT line without the need for a gsm network supplier etc. Subsequently development of the short code was put on hold whilst I did some digging and some trial work with this sms modem.

I can formally announce that the new text service at Heatherwood will use our existing telephone number and patients will only pay their normal network text rates. The cost to us has been £85 for the modem and an ongoing cost of about £6 per quarter on our phone bill for the use of caller display.

When Do We Launch?

Just as soon as I have delivered the training on the new software interfaces to each team night. I have already made a number of trailers, and posters are complete and the leaflets have already been printed.

I will be putting the finishing touches to the training guide over the next few days and on Saturday provided my last weekly test is successful we will be ready to roll.

A lot of work has gone into this, I have no idea how popular this is likely to be for us but the fact that we are going to offer the service should improve our contact ability.

The really good news for us is, we will not be giving the impression that we are ripping of users by the use of premium rate numbers.

If you have some questions now is the time to ask ?

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Text Service Promotion

Leaflets & Posters Never Released.

Texting to Radio ?

 

2007 Year Thirty One Story Unfolds

2007 was a very busy year for the station management and as the year unfolded there was much to do and organise

For further information about this year:- Follow the links

Text Service To Be Moth Balled

A lack of new recruits approaching us, staff departures and the changes taking place with the hospital prompted us to revue the implementation.On the 16th September the final briefing on the subject was posted on the staff bulletin board.

Prior to me leaving for holiday I had a quick conversation with Dave about the staffing levels and the continuing lack of new recruits.

If we launch the text service and we loose one of the broadcast nights we may find the text service being used to send us complaints about the lack of requests being collected etc.

The low levels of staff and pressures on the nights with few members wouldn't be fair for us to impose this new service on them.

David & I have decided to mothball the service and not launch until such times as we can do it justice.

P Davidson-Smith Secretary September 2007

Comment 2011

There was a sophisticated technical wizardry, which would take place every time a text arrived. This was quite a challenge to get everything to slot into place. A lot of effort went into fine tuning this.The interaction this would have generated would have given everyone a real buzz. My one regret is, this wasn't implemented and remains in mothballs.

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Archive Gems

Just some extra's we found:-

2007 The Story Continues!

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