Based on recent, hugely successful deployments in some high-traffic jurisdictions, court kiosks are now attracting plenty of attention from administrators of courts and other government agencies nationwide.

Court kiosks armed with up-to-date technologies are an ideal way to reduce operating costs, speed transactions and improve service in courthouses and government agencies worldwide.

Kiosks in courts have been quietly shouldering an increasing amount of clerks’ workloads since the early 2000s, yet the recent blending of several key new technologies has now made these “mechanical clerks” quite popular.

From basic check-ins and fee payments to complex legal filings

Earlier generations of court kiosks were dedicated to mundane tasks such as documenting the arrival of visitors, litigants and attorneys for scheduled court proceedings. Nowadays, even the most basic courthouse kiosks provide real-time notification of parties’ arrivals, plus docket information including case numbers, hearing dates and times, names of parties, judges and attorneys, and even wayfinding directions to reach courtrooms. By replacing costly human staffing resources with kiosks to answer repetitive questions from courthouse visitors, busy courts and government centers now enjoy faster throughput and more effective outcomes.

Best of all, self-service kiosks in courthouses and government agencies improve efficiency in collecting fees and fines. Many jurisdictions are using kiosks to provide a fast, convenient way to pay traffic tickets and fines in ordinary cases, while other courts use them to collect a range of revenues. Court kiosks make it very easy for the public to pay fines, assessments, taxes and other legal obligations, including registration and licensing fees, court costs, and even support payments, all without requiring direct intervention from busy staff.

Beyond fee-collections and fines, systems are even capable of supporting remote video interaction between judges, parties and counsel, or filing complex legal documents.

Instead of bringing people to court, take the court to the people

Whether the equipment is installed on courthouse premises, or placed in other public or retail locations, these powerful tools can prevent document-filing bottlenecks and speed the resolution of cases in traffic and domestic courts and other jurisdictions with high-volume caseloads.

Some jurisdictions are using court kiosks for outreach to under-served communities. The convenience and anonymity of remote kiosks make it easy for all community members to find court-related information such as court calendars, legal forms and instructions, and individual case information.

The public can also use remote kiosks to perform basic filings, print court-related documents, and pay court-ordered fees and fines, without the need to travel to the courthouse in person.

Complete courthouse-in-a-box

A complete “courthouse-in-a-box” solution can meet the needs of any court, whether large or small. The solution begins with a tough, sleek, abuse-proof enclosure featuring a rugged touchscreen and/or keyboard with trackball interface.

Court kiosk systems include PC components and Internet connectivity, and they often feature card readers as well as printers and scanners. Depending on the court’s needs, the equipment also includes a two-way video interface, audio connection with live staff, or fingerprint reader.

Do more with less

Across the U.S. and worldwide, the popularity of court and government agency kiosk systems is growing rapidly, as administrators discover their usefulness and cost-effectiveness at helping governments accomplish better results, while using fewer resources.

At a time when healthcare providers are being squeezed by the economic realities of shrinking operating budgets and thinner revenues, the good news is that healthcare kiosk technologies have now evolved to offer truly effective solutions with numerous benefits for providers. Given the high operating costs of providing care, kiosks give organizations a variety of powerful tools to save money and improve patient outcomes.

Let’s take a look at the five most-popular ways that self-service kiosks are being deployed to support the healthcare mission.

Healthcare information retrieval and patient check-in

The quickest and easiest savings come from deploying kiosks with a primary function of checking-in patients upon arrival at the location, as well as empowering patients and staff to quickly and securely access patient information on-site.

In traditional reception scenarios, patients arrive for their appointments and besiege receptionists and other front-line staff with questions and requests for assistance in completing the necessary documents. In addition, all too often, patients show up in droves during high-traffic hours, and this requires administrators to over-budget for staff throughout the day simply to ensure adequate coverage during these peak times.

Time is money

In contrast, a well-designed self-service informational kiosk system allows most patients to check in at their own convenience, as well as automatically alerting staff about their arrivals. While a patient completes his or her own intake documents through a convenient touchscreen interface, staff is already preparing to meet that patient’s healthcare needs. And, once a patient completes the electronic check-in process, the kiosk can print out the exact office number and name of the healthcare professional whom they seek, while also showing a way-finding map and instructions on the kiosk’s screen.

Of course, reception staff is able to better focus on assisting those patients who truly need individual attention during check-in. The result is a reduced need for reception staff, faster turnaround time for all check-ins, and happier patients.

Collections

Collections are a critical component of any successful healthcare business – good care must be paid for, or the business can’t continue to serve patients. As more employers are offering high-deductible insurance plans in order to manage corporate costs, responsibility for collections of payments and co-payments is an increasing concern for providers.

Kiosks offer ideal solutions for speeding and simplifying the collections process. Accounting staff find kiosks an ideal way to improve collections while keeping patients happy.

Instead of sending a snail-mail bill several weeks after a service has been provided, savvy providers are deploying kiosks with card-readers which enable immediate collections for services rendered. Patients can check in, receive billing, and pay their accounts even while they await their appointments.

Wellness information and healthcare education

Another fast-growing use for kiosks involves dispensing wellness information and providing healthcare education. Often, patients arrive for their appointments on time, yet must then wait to be seen by the appropriate professional. A traditional scenario involves stocking waiting rooms with expensive printed educational literature, which all too often becomes costly litter to be cleaned from the waiting room floor.

Healthcare organizations are discovering the importance of using interactive kiosks to help educate patients regarding their medical conditions and individual needs, while saving valuable time for busy professionals. Most patients’ questions and basic concerns can be answered through kiosks with touchscreens. This provides them with useful information while also helping pass some time while they wait.

As well, kiosks that dispense wellness information are proving to be a big hit both inside healthcare facilities and in retail locations such as drugstores. Healthcare kiosks can perform a range of basic diagnostic services including blood-pressure and temperature checks, weighing, and diabetes screening. Advanced kiosks can perform vision and hearing checks, too.

Patients report increased feelings of satisfaction and comfort when using these self-service diagnostic services, and retail organizations have been quick to leverage such kiosks for sales purposes by offering condition-appropriate marketing messages according to the results of kiosks’ screenings.

Likewise, kiosks are very popular in retail food markets where health-conscious consumers wish to learn the calorie counts, nutritional content or other background information about the foods they purchase. In fact, it seems that anywhere people desire to learn detailed, accurate health information, kiosks can help save money and provide better service overall.

Healthcare staff and visitor access

In today’s security-conscious society, another less well-known application for kiosks is becoming more widespread – the use of kiosks to monitor and control access to medical and nursing facilities.

In traditional scenarios, organizations use personal ID badges to identify staff and frequent visitors such as outside vendors and staff, yet it’s an imperfect system. Of course, it’s very difficult to keep track of one-time or occasional visitors such as patients’ families.

Yet, nowadays kiosks are being used to verify all visitors’ credentials and approve their access to particular locations. For example, visitors may check-in and receive a printed pass authorizing access to some areas of the facility, but not others.

Such kiosks help institutions comply with the strict requirements envisioned under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) by ensuring visitors’ accountability and limiting access to sensitive patient information. Likewise, kiosks can be used to ensure that visitors read and agree to important safety information or non-disclosure rules before being allowed to enter a location.

Kiosks as miniature satellite pharmacies

One of the most interesting applications for healthcare kiosks is their growing role as miniature satellite pharmacies, capable of dispensing a limited number of the most-common medications. This function is a critical time-saver for mainline pharmacy staff, and allows them to focus on serving the needs of patients who require the most attention.

In large pharmacy environments where many patients are waiting to have prescriptions filled for common medications, kiosks can dramatically reduce operating costs of fulfillment. Patients approaching waiting lines are prompted to check for availability of their common prescriptions, and upon swiping their prescription, they may receive a lightning-quick fill.

In summary, kiosks are spreading throughout the healthcare community. They’re finding new uses almost every day in locations ranging from hospitals to retail stores, and they’re certainly a welcome tool for both cost-conscious healthcare administrators and consumer retailers alike.

The Space Needle, the world famous landmark in Seattle, Washington, recently launched a number of innovative new digital experiences to enhance the visitor’s experience. The digital programs include a 20-foot by 8-foot interactive touchscreen dubbed the “SkyPad,” an augmented reality system that presents visitors with a variety of virtual scenes through interactions with their phone, a system that provides virtual tours of local landmarks using Microsoft PhotoSynth and an interactive photo system powered by 10 customized 32-inch Milan Landscape Olea Kiosks.

The 10 Milan kiosks are positioned throughout the landmark, from the gift shop to the observation deck. Throughout their visit, photos are taken of the guest and affiliated with their ticket. Guests can then visit one of the kiosks and scan their admission ticket to view their photos, which can be emailed to them or a friend.

This is the second time that Olea has had the privilege of working with the Space Needle organization in Seattle. Olea’s first project with the Space Needle involved the deployment of the Metro 22 transactional kiosks as a ticket vending machine.

For the latest Space Needle kiosk project, Olea worked with the Space Needle group to create a customized kiosk that not only included innovative interactive functionality, but could also withstand the rigors of millions of users annually. The Space Needle kiosks are based on the 32-inch Milan Landscape, fitted with a bar code scanner and interactive touchscreen interface. The bases of the kiosks were made smaller than the standard Milan Landscape model for a reduced footprint that consumes the least possible floor space. The bases have been bolted to the floor to ensure that the kiosks will withstand the wear and tear caused by the heavy foot traffic of this iconic landmark.

I am proud to announce the launch of the Automated Passport Solution, a touchscreen kiosk-based customs inspection system aimed at streamlining the airport customs process and reducing customs processing times. The APS kiosk system will be launching this fall at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, with 30 APS units in the initial launch.

Customs wait times across the country have been skyrocketing at nearly every international airport across the United States. Over the past 20 years, there has been a 117 percent increase in international travelers flying in and out of the U.S. At the same time, there has been a $754 million reduction in the budgets to the customs and border protection departments over the past year as a result of government sequestration. As a result, wait times have increased exponentially, leaving travelers forced to endure long lines at most international terminals, resulting in extreme wait times, such as 182 minutes to pass through customs at JFK's international terminal.

The APS kiosk system has been developed as a tool to automate and streamline the passenger-checking process of international customs by providing a high-tech solution to check and gather data. The APS software provides a touchscreen interface that allows the passenger to navigate through the software without needing human assistance.

The APS first scans the passenger's passport using the attached passport scanner peripheral. This retrieves the passenger's personal information from the integrated customs database. The passenger then must respond to questions that are similar to those that are asked by a human customs official. The thermal printer attachment allows the passenger to print their answers to the questions directly from the APS system. In addition, the webcam peripheral takes the passenger's photograph and stores that in the customs database for future retrieval.

The APS kiosk is built on Olea's Metrolite Kiosk framework. For the APS, the Metrolite has already been outfitted with the capability to attach a fingerprint reader peripheral to provide for a greater level of security.

I recently attended the 2013 Epic User Group Meeting in Verona, Wisconsin. The event saw an estimated 8,500 health care professionals on-hand for a variety of presentations and peer-to-peer educational sessions.

The conference gave our company a great opportunity to showcase some of our latest innovative implementations of the Epic Welcome software with our health care kiosks. Some of the most common features that are implemented with the Epic software and our kiosks are:

Patient self-check-in functionality – This allows patients to check-in to their doctor's office or hospital through an automated electronic interface, which provides a highly efficient user experience and also allows the health care provider to streamline their admin staff.

Patient payment functionality – By allowing the patient to electronically pay for their co-payment, these systems streamline the check-out process for both the patient and the healthcare provider.

Card scanning – By scanning the user's healthcare ID card and their driver's license, the provider can ensure that it has the latest customer information in its systems.

Electronic signature – With an electronic signature pad, electronic consent forms can be digitally signed to give them full legal authentication.

Wayfinding systems – With wayfinding functionality, the kiosk can provide a patient with directions within a specific building or inter-office directions for multiple buildings throughout an entire hospital campus.

Document printing capabilities – Adding a printer to the kiosk allows the patient to print a copy of office policies, their patient consent forms, and even directions provided by the wayfinding systems.

One of the newest pieces of functionality to be integrated into the Welcome software is biometric scanning functionality, which allows a system to identify a person based on unique identifiable biological information, such as fingerprints or the iris of the eye. The Welcome software supports integration with multiple different types of biometric scanners.

Overall, the 2013 Epic UGM show was a great opportunity to showcase the latest healthcare innovations. We look forward to continuing to push the envelope with new functionality that will provide better and more efficient patient experiences in the health care industry.

I’m sure like most people that are going to read this blog you’re looking for a formula that will help you to deploy a successful kiosk project. Like most anyone else I’ll tell you that a lot of up front planning is certainly going to help you. I’ve personally been involved with hundreds of different deployments over my 15 years in this industry and have seen great ideas and horrible ideas and have actually seen each have success and failures.

Failure more than anything seems very easy to describe as often times you can see it coming from a mile away. Typically these projects are poorly managed and not really well thought out in advance. Often times their RFP might look more like an RFI. Sort of the “tell me what you think is best” type of scenario. Don’t get me wrong after 15 years I know what might work best. But I’m not an expert on your business. I’m an expert in Kiosk design and manufacturing. Meaning I can tell you what style is going to work best in your store but I can’t guess at what hardware you want inside of your kiosk or what is going to work best without some meaningful input from you.

Often times it seems our most valuable clients and easy to work for are clients that have prior kiosk deployment experience. Because like us they’ve been there and done that and have seen it all. These people tend to know the pitfalls of kiosks in their business and want to avoid them at all costs. Often we see these clients going with the top of the line hardware as they know what MTBF means. They also know what the true cost of an out of order machine is.

Look at companies like Macy’s and Target who have run multiple generations of machines in their stores. Every time they go out for a new kiosk they’re armed to the hilt with information for what they do and don’t want. Just like any other business practice they get better at it over time.

One of my favorite deployments was for a Canadian Lottery. We did over 1,000 machines in a very short time frame. The job was a blast because we got to sit down with technicians who have been servicing their original kiosks for more than 5 years. These guys were amazing. They not only knew kiosk hardware but they completely understood their business in a way I never could. They literally helped us to design the kiosk from the inside out.

If you don’t have experience with kiosks don’t fret. This doesn’t mean you’re doomed to fail. It means you need to involve your thought leaders in the planning. All too often I see marketing depts. making what I think should be I.T. decisions or vice versa. The best companies bring all the business unit leaders together and make joint decisions. Marketing, Store planning, I.T., Legal, and other entities should all be involved in these types of projects. Self-Service being so new many companies have yet to form a strategy around deployments let alone a business unit whose sole purpose is self-service. So until that happens try to recruit other folks within your organization to your team. And work with a company that is willing to walk you through the steps and help you to understand the pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Not a day goes by that we're not on the phone with a potential client who needs a kiosk ASAP. We're not talking three or four weeks, but literally like two or three days. I often wonder why a company thinks deploying something as complex as a kiosk is a good idea.

If you know anything about kiosks — or any business decisions that involve thousands of dollars — you know there should always be good planning and budgeting behind major purchases. It goes without saying that when you wait until the last possible second your choices drastically decrease and prices often skyrocket.

I think it's a misconception that manufacturers keep inventory in a multitude of colors, quantities and hardware builds. For example, just one of my standard kiosks — the Metropolis — comes in seven standard colors and roughly 30 optional hardware items. This literally creates thousands of possible combinations. It would be impossible for us to keep even a tenth of that on the shelf for these "emergencies."

Price hikes happen for a number of reasons, including rush fees for possible overtime labor or overnight-shipping charges on hardware. Or worse, paying to overnight the kiosk can kill a budget. I cannot count the number of times we've overnighted a kiosk to the East coast and have seen the bill top $3K just for shipping! Most kiosks, when packed, are the size of a mid-size refrigerator. And if they cannot lay down, finding a plane large enough to transport them can get difficult.

Here on www.DigitalScreenmedia.org, you'll find all sorts of good information on proper planning for kiosk deployments. I think some folks think it doesn't pertain to them or maybe only applies to custom-made kiosks. I'm here to tell you that it counts for all types of kiosks. What if these last minute customers gave themselves a couple of weeks? They could likely get better pricing, more options and a color or style that works best for them.

The good news is that all of this can be avoided. You just need to plan ahead and start working with vendors earlier. Our standard product ships within two or three weeks but custom-made options obviously take longer. My advice? The moment you start thinking about a kiosk, reach out to vendors with questions about lead times and options. Most of us love our industry and would be more than happy to spend a few minutes educating. Of course, don't forget to plan your software needs, deployment goals, service and other resources, too. Remember, failing to plan is planning to fail.