SiteKiosk software promotes Americas BPS’ deployments of healthcare kiosks

 The Challenge
Americas BPS has received numerous awards and other recognition over the past few years for their commitment to excellence in operations, including a Golden Award of Best Strategy of Customer Service, a Golden Award of Outsourcing Services and a Bronze Award for Corporate Social Responsibility. Although Americas BPS’ main business has been the operation of call centers, about two years ago the company began branching out into the deployment of self-service kiosks. Its first entry into the sector is the delivery of healthcare services with healthcare kiosks. Through the kiosks, users can schedule appointments with healthcare providers, scan insurance forms and update personal information. The kiosks include a biometric device to identify users, a webcam for document scanning and a printer to print forms and other information. Because of the sensitive information conveyed via the kiosks Americas BPS needed a way to secure the devices, including preventing manipulation of the operating system, and to erase personal information and temporary files once a user completed their interaction. In addition, the company wanted to be able to display marketing information via the screensaver when the kiosks weren’t being used. And because the devices would be deployed in several countries, Americas BPS needed a way to manage them remotely and perform maintenance and troubleshooting functions without having to dispatch a technician.

The Solution
To accomplish those tasks, Americas BPS partnered with Madrid-based GrupoInfo24 S.L. to deploy SiteKiosk and other software from PROVISIO. GrupoInfo24 S.L., also known as GI24, has been working with PROVISO since 2002 to provide SiteKiosk software and consulting services and other related products including project management, training and hardware solutions. The software is compatible with Windows and Android. SiteKiosk allows deployers to securely present Web-based content such as HTML, videos and other web based content on kiosks, restricting access to the operating system, system settings, files, folders and applications. The kiosk is protected against unwanted manipulation from bootup to shutdown. SiteKiosk along with PROVISIO’s SiteRemote Cloud service enables administrators to manage machines remotely, allowing them to view the status of terminals, receive alerts about system issues and perform maintenance operations from a central workstation. The service also allows administrators to update digital signage content that is displayed when the kiosks are in the screensaver mode. In addition, SiteRemote provides customizable analytics reports, including usage statistics and hardware status. It also allows administrators to deploy third-party content. “The healthcare industry uses complex ad hoc applications for different purposes,” said GI24 CEO Jaime Glez. “In this case a complete program developed by Americas BPS included a local Web application that requires IIS, SQL server, several Active X plug-ins and a complete program based on .NET that manages all the functional requirements,” he said. “Contrary to most kiosk deployments based on a secure browser, this case involved a complete integration of the software in combination with the Web application to get both functionality and security.”

The Result
To date, Americas has deployed more than 60 healthcare kiosks across its operations, with additional healthcare kiosks planned across Latin America. All indications are that the kiosks have been well received by users, with performance exceeding expectations. In addition to SiteKiosk, the deployment used resources of SiteKiosk Object Model, a proprietary programming language based on JavaScript that features more than 1000 objects, methods and events. “Although most kiosk deployments can be implemented through some basic configuration settings and without a high knowledge of programming, it is always possible to go further thanks to this powerful resource,” Glez said.  The results of the services through the kiosks seems to have covered widely the expectations and have received also a good acceptance by customers. “It’s obvious that deploying healthcare kiosks across several countries can be a difficult task, but in this case it was made much easier thanks to PROVISIO’s software,” Glez said. “Now that Americas BPS has taken the first step and realizing the value that kiosks provide, the company is looking at ways to build on that experience,” he said. “Not only are they planning additional healthcare kiosks, they are considering other kinds of services as well, including as a complement to their call center operations.”