A waiting room is one of the few places where people have nothing to do but wait, and they know exactly how long they have been sitting there. A screen will not make a clinic run on time. What it does is give someone something to read, and that changes how the wait feels.
This is a practical guide for GP surgeries, dental and veterinary practices, clinics, pharmacies and hospital waiting areas: what belongs on the screen, how the data protection side works, what easyCMS will not do for you, and what two or twelve screens cost.
The advantages
- Reduce the perceived length of a wait
- Replace the noticeboard of curling A4 notices
- Change opening hours, cover and closures in seconds
- Run health information that suits your own patient list
- Keep screens playing when the practice network drops
- Buy the licences once, with no recurring fee
Waiting feels longer than it is
Occupied time passes faster than unoccupied time, and people tolerate a wait they understand far better than one that feels arbitrary. So a waiting room screen has two jobs: give people something worth reading, and say honestly what is happening today. A short panel explaining that the surgery is running twenty minutes behind because of an emergency this morning does more for the mood of a room than any amount of health content, and it is one text edit from a browser.
What actually goes on the screens
Opening hours, cover and out-of-hours
Today’s hours, lunchtime closing, bank holiday cover and the out-of-hours number. Keep it always on screen and people stop asking at the desk.
Health information for your own patient list
Vaccination reminders, self-care advice, dental or pet care. Twenty messages rotate in the space one poster used to take.
Practice news and who works here
New clinicians with their photo and role, a new service, a change to repeat prescriptions. A face on screen does what a leaflet cannot.
A clock
A visible, correct time removes a small, constant irritation in a waiting room. Analogue, digital or flip style.
Arrival guidance and wayfinding
How to check in, where to wait, which corridor leads where. Dull, and it saves reception many interruptions a day.
Silent video
Short, calm clips: a practice tour, a procedure explained gently. Slow cuts suit a room full of anxious people.
A rota or price list you maintain yourself
Keep a duty rota or a private price list in a simple table and the screen follows. It connects to nothing clinical. See dynamic content with DataSets.
What to leave off
- Patient names or initials. Ever. Not on a rota, not on a welcome message.
- Anything resembling personalised medical advice. General public health information is fine.
- Dense text. People read from four to six metres away while listening for their name. Two lines and a picture, not a paragraph.
- News feeds you do not control. A general RSS ticker will eventually put something distressing next to your bereavement support poster.
Watch out A screen filled with adverts for private treatments loses its credibility for everything else within a fortnight. Keep commercial content to a minority of the loop.
Sound in a waiting room
Plan for silence. Design the loop to work with the volume at zero, because that is how it will run most of the time: captions or on-screen text on every video, nothing whose meaning depends on a voiceover. If you do want sound, keep it low, set the level at the screen or player, and site that screen away from reception. Audio near the desk competes with a patient discussing their own health, which is a confidentiality problem before it is a comfort problem.
What easyCMS will not do for you
There is no patient record, practice management or clinical system integration. None. easyCMS does not connect to your practice management software, patient records, booking system or ticket dispenser, and there is no integration marketplace or public API portal, so nobody can build one for you either.
It cannot call patients forward. A screen showing “next patient, room 4” is queue management, and easyCMS is not a queue management system. Practices that need calling forward buy a dedicated queue system on its own screen and run easyCMS on the waiting room screen beside it. Two jobs, two products, no shame in buying both.
There is no charts widget. If you already publish a Power BI dashboard you can show it through the dashboards add-on, and the webpage widget can display an internal page, but easyCMS will not draw a graph from your spreadsheet.
There is no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification, and we will not claim one. What we can tell you is below, and specific questions get a specific answer by email.
There is no free trial and no free plan. The lowest entry point is 49€, once. Storage is modest too: 1GB on that account, 5GB on PRO, generous for images and tight for video. See storage quota and media uploads.
Data protection, and what the screens can see
This is not legal advice, but the honest starting point is that a waiting room screen is low risk because it holds no personal data in the first place. Beyond that:
- easyCMS is a European company. DynamicDigital sp. z o.o., registered in Warsaw, Poland, EU VAT PL5213678094, operating within the EU legal framework.
- The CMS is hosted in the European Union, at Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany. Your media and layouts do not leave the EU.
- Players pull, they never listen. The player makes an outbound, encrypted connection and asks for its content. It accepts no inbound connections, so there is no port to open on your firewall and nothing on your network is exposed by installing it. Send your IT provider the network requirements before installation.
- Every display must be authorised in the CMS before it receives anything at all.
- Screenshots are optional. Display monitoring can take an on-demand screenshot of what a screen is playing. It captures the player’s video output, not the room: there is no camera in the product, no audience measurement and no face detection. If your information governance lead would rather it were never used, do not use it, because nothing else depends on it. See display monitoring.
- Accounts are password protected, and the Enterprise account adds users, roles and permissions.
Good to know For a Data Processing Agreement or a specific GDPR question, email info@myeasycms.com and you will get a proper answer rather than a link. The privacy policy and the FAQ cover the general ground.
Where to put screens, and what size
| Location | Suggested size | Orientation | Job it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main waiting room | 43”–55” | Landscape | Health information, silent video, clock |
| Reception / check-in | 32”–43” | Portrait | Arrival guidance, opening hours, cover |
| Corridor to consulting rooms | 43” | Portrait | Wayfinding, notices |
| Pharmacy counter | 43”–49” | Landscape | Services, seasonal campaigns |
| Entrance or window | 43”–55” high brightness | Portrait | Hours, closures, out-of-hours number |
Mount lower than you would in a corridor, because your audience is sitting: the centre of the screen wants to be around 1.4 to 1.5 m, tilted down if it has to go higher. Size the smallest text at roughly 1/25 of the screen height, about 27 mm on a 55” panel. Panel choice is covered in LCD displays for digital signage.
What it costs
Take a practice with two screens: one in the waiting room, one at reception.
| Line | Cost |
|---|---|
| easyCMS account, 1 display licence, up to 5 displays, 1GB storage | 49 EUR one-time |
| 1 × extra display licence, same order | 66 EUR one-time |
| Software total, paid once | 115 EUR |
Against a typical subscription:
| Two screens | Year 1 | After 5 years |
|---|---|---|
| easyCMS | 115 EUR | 115 EUR |
| Subscription at 8 EUR per screen per month | 192 EUR | 960 EUR |
You pay once and the screens are yours to run.
- A clinic group with twelve screens across four sites fits on the PRO account: 299€ plus eleven licences, 1,025€ once.
- Licences added later are 99€ each instead of 66€.
- A single screen? Yodeck’s free plan may be enough. easyCMS has no free plan.
- Hardware: an easyCMS Android player is 499€ and includes the licence for its screen.
Every price is on the pricing page, and the longer comparison is in cost per screen.
The capex argument
Most practices budget once a year, and the difference between a capital purchase and an operating cost is not an accounting detail to a practice manager. A one-time licence is approved once and stays bought. A per-screen monthly fee has to be defended every budget round, grows the moment a partner asks for a screen in the second waiting room, and is the line that gets cut in a tight year, taking your notices with it. Every purchase comes with a VAT invoice, and you can pay by card, PayPal, local European methods or bank transfer against an invoice. More in digital signage with no monthly fee.
Running it day to day
Who updates it
One person at the front desk, about ten minutes a week. After the first setup you only change text and pictures.
Scheduling
Arrival guidance first thing, health information through the day, out-of-hours from late afternoon, bank holidays planned a year ahead.
When the network drops
Screens keep playing what is scheduled and catch up when the connection returns. See digital signage without internet.
Getting started
Connect your first display, then pick a template from the healthcare collection.
Tip Studio’s Urgent notice is ready before you need it. A full-screen notice for a burst pipe, a snow day or an unexpected absence goes on every screen in one action when the morning goes wrong, and Stop puts everything back.
Questions practices ask
Can it call patients through to a room?
No. There is no queue management and no link to your booking or patient record system. Use a dedicated queue system on its own screen and run easyCMS on the waiting room screen beside it.
Will our IT provider have to open a firewall port?
No. The player makes an outbound encrypted connection and pulls its content. It accepts no inbound connections.
Can anyone see our waiting room remotely?
No. There is no camera. The only remote view is an optional screenshot of what the screen itself is playing, and you can choose never to use it.
Do we pay per screen every month?
No. Licences are one-time and lifetime. The only recurring plan is the Enterprise account, for organisations above 25 displays or wanting white labelling on their own domain.
Who supports us if something breaks?
The assistant and the guides are free to everyone, and an Expert Support Hour is 25€ when you want an engineer on your own setup. Options are listed in getting help and support.
Where to start
Count your screens, then decide whether any of them genuinely needs to call patients forward. If one does, budget a separate queue system for that job alone. Everything else is a small, contained project: one account, one licence per screen, a layout with opening hours in a fixed zone, and ten minutes a week.
Tell us how many rooms you are covering and whether you need hardware, and we will price it. Email info@myeasycms.com, call +48 509 937 137, or use the support request form.
