Alternatives to Intranet for Healthcare: Bridging the Gap with Digital Signage

In healthcare, frontline workers are the backbone of patient care. Nurses, doctors, technicians, and support staff all keep the wheels turning in hospitals, doctors offices and dentists. 

Yet, they often struggle to access critical information due to the limitations of traditional intranets. 

According to our research with Unily, 72% of frontline employees across industries don’t have a strong grasp of company strategy, and 71% admit to using unauthorized tools to access information when official channels fail them.

In healthcare, this access to timely information is critical, not just to the smooth management of the workplace but often in cases of literal life and death. 

Digital signage offers a solution by surfacing intranet content in high-traffic areas, ensuring frontline staff stay informed without disrupting workflows.

The problem: Lack of accessibility for frontline staff

Traditional intranets assume employees have desk access, time to log in, and the ability to search for updates. But as anyone who works in healthcare will already know, this rarely holds true:

• Time constraints: Nurses and doctors move between patients, procedures, and emergencies. Spending thirty minutes per shift searching for information isn’t feasible, so intranets don’t always serve the user. 
• Device limitations: Many healthcare workers lack dedicated workstations or mobile access to intranets.
• Information overload: Critical updates, policy changes, safety alerts, or training often get buried in cluttered emails or intranet portals.

As a result of this siloed approach to information, workers experience missed updates, which can result in compliance risks, and disengaged staff. In fact, in our study with Unily, it was found that frontline workers can wait almost a week, 4.5 days, to receive information about company updates.

And, in addition to this, 44% of frontline workers say information is spread across too many systems, making it hard to find what they need when they need it.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the problems of unsecure data access mean that ‘Shadow IT’ is a major headache for large organizations. Shadow IT is where staff use unsecured and unofficial channels to share and access sensitive information, creating potential security risks and data leaks. In fact, in our research, it was found that 71% of frontline workers use unauthorized tools when official channels fail. 

The solution: Surfacing key communication on screens

When it comes to accessing information, sometimes a glance is all that is needed. Hiding critical updates behind logins isn’t always necessary, especially in high pressure and fast paced environments like hospitals and healthcare facilities. 

Digital signage bridges the gap by pushing intranet content to screens in break rooms, hallways, and lobbies—places where staff naturally gather. Unlike intranets and internal communication tools, which require active engagement, digital signage delivers passive, real-time updates.

The main benefits for healthcare organizations:

1. Instant visibility: Display shift changes, emergency protocols, or HR announcements without requiring logins.
2. Compliance reinforcement: Surface mandatory training reminders or policy updates where staff can’t miss them.
3. Crisis communication: Broadcast urgent alerts (e.g., weather closures, IT outages) immediately.
4. Integration with existing tools: ScreenCloud connects with leading intranet platforms (SharePoint, Unily, Firstup, etc.) to pull content automatically.

Integrating intranets with digital signage

The intranet is often a focus point for organizations. This is where information lives and where people hear the breaking news from the boss or big policy changes. 

ScreenCloud doesn’t replace your intranet, but amplifies it. Digital signage takes the content from your hospital intranet and puts it on screens in:

• Break rooms: Meeting workers in their downtime with employee recognition, company events and wellness tips.
• Nurse stations: Sharing real-time patient-care protocols, staff or shift changes and emergency updates.
• Lobby screens: Communicate with patients and visitors by sharing instructions, wayfinding, policies and live waiting times (among many other things).
• Hallways: Safety updates, meet the team announcements, emergency alerts and waiting times make hospital hallways a place for both staff and patient facing content.

But one of the biggest IT headaches when deploying new communication tools is the fear of double-entry or the need to manage ANOTHER technical system. No one wants to update SharePoint and update fifty screens manually across five sites.

But luckily, ScreenCloud bridges this gap by acting as a secure broadcast layer for the world’s leading intranet and communication platforms. We don't replace your Single Source of Truth; we amplify it.

Looking to expand your intranet to screens? We can help.

Popular intranet and collaboration tools for digital signage

Being able to easily connect and manage your intranet with your digital signage is an important part of choosing a digital signage CMS. ScreenCloud offers native app integrations with the most popular healthcare intranets, including:

1. Staffbase

Often used as a mobile-first employee app for hospitals, allowing nurses and doctors to access payslips, shift schedules, and news on their own devices.

ScreenCloud pulls Hero stories and urgent announcements from Staffbase and broadcasts them to screens such as in breakrooms. This ensures that staff who haven't checked the app during their shift still see critical updates.

2. Unily

A high-end, centralized intranet often used by large hospital trusts to consolidate resources, policy documents, and social feeds into one digital workplace.

By using the Unily integration, Comms teams can automatically push Trending or Department-Specific news to screens, ensuring the most popular intranet content reaches the ward.

3. Simpplr

Focused on employee experience and sentiment, Simpplr is used by healthcare HR teams to drive engagement, share Employee of the Month spotlights, and gather feedback.

ScreenCloud turns Simpplr's visually rich news feed into a digital broadcast, effectively turning an internal social network into a live TV channel for the hospital.

4. Firstup

A communication orchestrator that helps healthcare systems target messages to specific groups (e.g., only surgeons, or only staff in a specific wing).

ScreenCloud acts as a final endpoint for Firstup. When a message is sent through Firstup, it can be routed directly to the specific screens located in the departments that need to see it most.

5. Microsoft SharePoint

The document and data backbone for most healthcare IT stacks. It stores everything from clinical SOPs to cafeteria menus and PowerBI performance dashboards.

ScreenCloud can securely surface SharePoint lists, document galleries, and live dashboards. It translates complex data into simple, glanceable visuals for staff stations.

6. Microsoft Teams

Used for real-time coordination, department chats, and virtual handovers.

ScreenCloud can pull from a dedicated channel in Teams, for example for Handovers or Staff Updates. If a Ward Manager types an update in the specific Teams channel, it appears on the screens across the ward instantly.

7. Slack

Less common in clinical wards but widely used by Hospital IT and Operations teams to monitor system uptimes or coordinate facility management.

Similar to Teams, ScreenCloud monitors specific Slack channels. This is often used for Flash Alerts - emergency messages or IT system statuses that need to be seen by the entire tech team at once.

Getting started with ScreenCloud

For IT and comms teams, implementing digital signage with ScreenCloud is straightforward. Here’s how to plan out your digital signage network before launching:

1. Audit content: Identify what’s most critical (e.g., compliance, schedules).
2. Choose locations: Place screens where staff congregate (break rooms, nurse stations, waiting areas).
3. Install and connect: Once your screens are in place, connect ScreenCloud to your intranet (e.g., SharePoint) to auto-pull updates.
4. Measure impact: Track engagement via ScreenCloud’s analytics.

Because digital signage is usually a 24/7 operational feature, we recommend looking at our proprietary hardware players. While ScreenCloud is hardware agnostic and will work with most popular media players, using PIXI or Station P1 Pro players gives additional layers of functionality such as Remote Device Management, first class security and 99% glitch-free operation. 

Find out more about healthcare digital signage.

A smarter way to inform healthcare staff

Intranets are a powerful communication tool - but they alone can’t reach healthcare’s frontline. Digital signage fills the gap in hospital internal comms by making critical information visible, actionable, and impossible to ignore. With ready to go integrations for SharePoint, Unily, and others, ScreenCloud ensures your intranet’s value isn’t lost on the workers who need it most.

Try ScreenCloud for free today, or book a demo to find out more.