Digital Signage CMS Yodeck Offers Cloud Service Free To Healthcare Sector For 2020

April 7, 2020 by Dave Haynes

The Raspberry Pi-focused digital signage CMS Yodeck is offering up its cloud-based management platform free of charge to hospitals, pharmacies and other health-oriented organizations on the “front lines” of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company – which has an address in San Francisco but I am reasonably sure is heavily based in Athens, Greece – says the program is “an effort to help organizations and companies keep their staff, patients, visitors, employees and customers safe and informed.”

All new Yodeck accounts and new screens that exclusively communicate COVID-19 safety messages (including content focusing on COVID-19 hygiene and prevention guidelines as well as information about pandemic statistics) will be free.

This COVID-19 free signage offer begins now and lasts until the end of 2020. Additionally, Players – hardware required to run the signage screens – will be provided at cost-price and can be refunded upon return.

Organizations can apply for this offer by simply filling out this form (on www.yodeck.link/covid-19). 

Furthermore, Yodeck created free COVID-19 safety templates, in an effort to lighten the administrative burden. We hope they can be a quick and easy way for any organization to display COVID-19 screen warnings.

Vangelis Mihalopoulos, CEO at Yodeck: “Our goal is to help you keep your patients, clients and employees safe and healthy during this dangerous pandemic. It’s part of our corporate philosophy to always do the best we can to help in trying times. We aim to be the kind of company that gives back. This is the best way we could contribute to the global effort.”

It’s a nice gesture, albeit also a way to “seed” the health care marketplace with a free service  that might eventually convert to paid for some users if they liked what it does and how it operated. Human nature is such that if you grow used to something, and it is not giving you grief, the easy thing is to just keep using it, as opposed to making the effort to see if there are other options that might be closer to the absolute need.

I am not suggesting that’s why the company is doing this, but longer term adoption by some users is a logical outcome, and a fair trade-off that’s the cornerstone of the “freemium” idea across the cloud software world. 

I can’t even imagine – and don’t want to personally see – what is going on in health care environments right now. I doubt they need hand washing reminders, but you’d think the ability to run screens that can do near real-time status messaging and alerts on patients, as well as staffing and supply levels, would be invaluable amid the organized chaos of ERs, ICUs and temporary field hospitals.