ASHLAND — John Stevens walked into a patient’s room one day and saw one of the hospital’s diabetic videos on the TV screen.

“I said, ‘Oh, are you diabetic?’ and he said, ‘No, but my wife is ...,” he said.

Another patient asked if she could get to her e-mail, to send a message to her son in California.

Others have used King’s Daughters Medical Center’s new in-room computer gateway to play video games, check prescriptions, watch movies, send nurses a note and watch a video about heart catheterization.

“What better way for a patient to come in, anxious about a procedure, and find out than by watching an educational video,” Stevens said. “It breaks down the barriers and releases some of the anxiety about being a patient.”

And that’s exactly what Michael B. O’Neil Jr., founder and CEO of GetWellNetwork, had in mind when he started his company eight years ago.

In graduate school then, O’Neil was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and spent a lot of time in the hospital.

“I spent 12 days as an in-patient and four cycles of chemotherapy,” he said. “I had a wonderful medical outcome, but quite a challenging patient experience.”

O’Neil said he never felt so unempowered in his entire life. In a world filled with global communication tools and ever-increasing access, that is taken away as clothes are replaced by hospital gowns, he said.

On a mundane level, patients even have to pay to watch static-filled TV channels, he added.

“There’s so much power in a hospital with (medical) technology, and yet” that’s where it stops, O’Neil said. “A more actively involved, engaged patient is a better patient ... and we set out there to develop a technology platform to fulfill that mission.”

That mission of interactive patient care.

So far, more than 50 hospitals across the country — including King’s Daughters Medical Center, as well as top university and children’s hospitals — are clients of his GetWellNetwork.

It’s a multimedia service offering Internet access, entertainment and patient education, among other resources, in a patient’s room.

The system is controlled by a keyboard and remote, with the room TV as a monitor displaying everything from broadcast programming to a Yahoo e-mail account.

At King’s Daughters, the service was introduced last May in the Heart and Vascular Center. In the fall, the Heart and Vascular Recovery and Heart and Vascular Step Down units added the service.

It’s now available in the hospital’s newly designed Oncology Services Unit. In the coming weeks the medical center also will introduce the service to the recently relocated Internal Medicine Unit.

The GetWellNetwork enables patients to send and receive messages, watch movies, play games, and learn more about their condition. The system enables patients to interact with nurses and provide feedback about the care they receive, said Stevens, who provides on-site management of the GetWellNetwork at KDMC.

When a patient is admitted, their GetWellNetwork screens are personalized, and Stevens makes “rounds” to ensure they understand how to use it.

“It’s an option to reach beyond the hospital walls,” he said. “They’re browsing the Web and sending e-mails to relatives across the country. We’ve enjoyed a great deal of positive feedback about the service.”

Stevens said educational videos on the network also are popular with patients.

“Patients are learning about what to expect from an upcoming cardiac catheterization procedure, and how to get started with our free tobacco cessation program,” he said.

At Children’s Hospital in Chicago, patients watched 90,000 movies the first year — which helped entertain patients, and help them heal — while at the same time in Virginia, the company worked with cardiologists to help educate with videos, O’Neil said.

In some sense, the GetWellNetwork helps them feel as normal as possible during a hospital stay, O’Neil said.

“It let’s them heal and feel in control, and feel normal,” he said.

In the hospital, patients can interact with physicians as they order tests. Also, the more patients learn, the better they know about their conditions, and that could reduce re-admission rates, O’Neil said.

“There are a range of things we think interactive patient care can do,” he said.

The company has measured success, especially in such interactive feedback. A client hospital recently received a Modern Healthcare “Spirit of Excellence” award for service because of GetWellNetwork.

Patient surveys in 2004-05 reported a 9 percent increase of ease in finding staff, and a 9.4 percent increase in timely responses to patient needs in the post-partum wing.

“There’s certainly an excitement in our organization,” O’Neil said, “especially when we have good partners that really believe in our mission, including KDMC.”

ALLEN BLAIR can be reached at ablair@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2657.