Healthcare Design - January/February 2025 - 23

COURTESY OF RECORNECT
high-acuity mental health settings, which allowed
him to understand the challenges and
unmet needs this industry was facing: lack of
resources dedicated to behavioral health, highstress
work environments, and sometimescounterproductive
action plans for patients. He
was able to apply his own experiences to build a
product that solved the issues he, his colleagues,
and his patients faced on a regular basis. This
solution manifested itself as CoWin, or " communication
window, " reintroducing control to
behavioral health patients and caregivers alike.
The original product concept was followed
action would be to physically restrain or medicate their patient. Without
the tools accessible to prevent escalating situations, they often resort to
these measures. The stress of having to perform these actions against a
person they are caring for can be detrimental to the staff .
What product features deliver a new approach to de-escalation
and patient care?
CoWin was designed to empower the patient and caregivers, safely reintroducing
elements of control into the environment through a library of collaborative
and calming applications in order to create more effi cient healing
pathways.
by a partnership with Philips, which was seeking
to design a more eff ective behavioral health
room and experience for pediatric patients in
the U.S. The company utilized CoWin as a cornerstone
of its design. Since then, CoWin has
been further commercialized, expanding its
use cases to emergency departments and crisis/
isolation rooms.
What specifi c clinical/operational
problems were you trying to solve with
this product?
In traditional inpatient behavioral health
rooms, everything is taken away from the patient
when they are admitted. This is done for
safety reasons, but it has a compounding adverse
effect on the well-being of the patient;
someone who is already in distress has all control
of their environment stripped from them.
At the same time, caregivers were faced with
distressing protocols for de-escalating their
patients: the best and recommended course of
These features and capabilities include environmental controls such
as lighting, temperature, windows, and blinds. When granted by the
caregiver, the controls allow the patients to adjust their environment to
better suit their needs. Additionally, collaborative games create outlets
for stress, drawing applications allow for artistic and creative activities,
and the relax application creates a calming environment with soothing
images and soundscapes.
How does this set-up benefi t patients and staff ?
These applications and controls have proven to not only de-escalate patients
without the need for restraints and medications, but they also create
the opportunity to prevent escalation in the fi rst place.
With the customization and personalization offered through CoWin,
caregivers are able to design the care pathway for each patient to meet their
specifi c needs. Patients and caregivers alike experience higher levels of satisfaction
with the care that is being provided, which in turn creates operational
effi ciencies and better clinical outcomes.
How is the media wall designed to serve a wide range of patients'
sensory needs?
Access to environmental controls can be tailored to each patient. The
system also features a manager application, which is controlled by someone
outside the patient room. Through this manager, the system can be
customized to give allowances, change the interface, or even control the
media wall. With the ability to create patient profi les for diff erent levels
of care and to assign each room to a specifi c patient, CoWin is able to intuitively
accommodate a wide range of sensory needs with ease.
Do you have plans to expand CoWin to other healthcare
environments?
Our product is constantly evolving to improve patient and caregiver experiences.
We seek to establish rapport with our customers so that we can
regularly receive feedback. Through this input, we have begun to explore
new use cases like neurodegenerative diseases, autism spectrum, and developmental
disability and other settings outside inpatient rooms.
Robert McCune is senior editor of Healthcare Design and can be reached
at ROBERT.MCCUNE@EMERALDX.COM .
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2025
23
Healthcare Design - January/February 2025

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Healthcare Design - January/February 2025
