Desktop Screensavers Powering Healthcare Communication Across Two NHS Trusts

1. Customer overview

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust and Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust are two major NHS healthcare providers serving communities across London and the surrounding regions.

CNWL provides more than 300 healthcare services across approximately 150 locations in London, Milton Keynes, Surrey and surrounding areas.

CLCH is one of the largest community healthcare providers in the United Kingdom providing community healthcare services across approximately 290 locations in 14 London boroughs and Hertfordshire.

Across the two Trusts, Vibe’s desktop screensaver communication channel now reaches approximately 16,000 desktop workers across 440 locations.

Their workforces are highly distributed and include a diverse mix of clinical, operational, administrative and support roles. Many employees work in fast-paced environments and do not have the time or opportunity to continually check traditional workplace communication channels.

2. The challenge

Reaching employees consistently across a large healthcare organisation is difficult.

Important clinical, operational, organisational, wellbeing and safety messages must compete with busy inboxes, intranet updates, team briefings and the day-to-day demands of delivering patient care.

While these established channels remain important, relying on employees to actively open an email, visit an intranet or attend a briefing can lead to uneven visibility. This is particularly challenging when thousands of employees are working across hundreds of locations, services and working patterns.

CNWL and CLCH needed a communication channel that could:

• Bring important information directly to staff
• Reach employees across a large and distributed technology environment
• Complement existing email and intranet communication
• Operate without disrupting clinical systems or workflows
• Avoid creating additional tasks for employees
• Give communication teams greater control over message visibility
• Be managed centrally and deployed at scale

The solution also needed to integrate with each Trust’s existing IT environment and meet the security, governance and operational requirements expected within the NHS. Any solution had to work at scale, avoid adding operational burden, and integrate cleanly into their existing IT environment without creating additional complexity.

3. Why visibility matters in healthcare

Effective workplace communication is essential in any organisation, but it is particularly important in healthcare.

Employees need to remain informed about organisational priorities, clinical initiatives, technology changes, staff wellbeing, learning opportunities, policy updates and important operational information.

When messages are missed, delayed or forgotten, it can affect employee engagement, organisational alignment and the successful delivery of important initiatives.

For large NHS Trusts, inconsistent communication can result in:

• Employees missing time-sensitive operational updates
• Reduced awareness of organisational and clinical priorities
• Uneven communication between locations and departments
• Lower visibility of wellbeing, culture and employee-support initiatives
• Important messages becoming lost within busy email inboxes
• Communication teams repeatedly republishing the same information across multiple channels

Improving visibility is therefore more than a communication objective. It helps support a connected, informed and aligned healthcare workforce.

4. The solution

CNWL and CLCH selected Vibe.fyi’s desktop screensaver channel to bring important workplace messages directly to staff desktops.

Across the two Trusts, the channel has been deployed to approximately 16,000 desktop devices across roughly 400+ healthcare locations.

The projects were delivered in partnership with Wavenet, Vibe’s NHS referral and technology partner. Wavenet worked with the Trusts’ IT and communication teams to coordinate deployment, testing and implementation within their existing technology environments.

Each rollout followed a structured delivery process that included technical validation, staged deployment and governance aligned with NHS security and compliance requirements.

This approach allowed the screensaver channel to be introduced with minimal disruption to employees and no impact on clinical systems.

Once deployed, Vibe transformed the traditional screensaver into an always-visible workplace communication channel. Messages are displayed during natural pauses in the working day, including when employees step away from their computers or return to their desks between tasks.

Staff do not need to remember to visit another platform, open another application or search for the information. The communication comes directly to them.

5. Reimagining the screensaver as a modern communication channel

A traditional screensaver is often viewed as a static image or an unused part of the desktop experience.

Vibe transforms this space into a centrally managed dynamic communication channel that can be easily updated with relevant, engaging content.

Communication teams can use the channel to promote:

• Organisational news and priorities
• Clinical and operational initiatives
• Employee wellbeing programmes
• Learning and development opportunities
• Technology and cybersecurity awareness
• Health and safety information
• Recognition and culture campaigns
• Events, deadlines and calls to action
• Important or time-sensitive announcements

Vibe’s Smart Templates make it easy for communication teams to turn everyday information into polished, on-brand, dynamic content in minutes, without starting from scratch or relying on design resources for every update.

This makes it easier to publish new information, refresh existing campaigns and maintain a consistent visual standard across a large organisation.

6. Helping messages remain visible without creating fatigue

How content is delivered is equally important. For both Trusts, a key requirement was ensuring messages remained visible and engaging without becoming overexposed. 

Simply displaying the same message repeatedly does not guarantee that it will be noticed or remembered.

When employees see an identical screen every day, the content can quickly become part of the background. This reduces attention and creates message fatigue.

Vibe addresses this through visual variation, where messages are rotated and reintroduced at planned intervals rather than shown on constant repeat. Changing content over time helps keep screens visually fresh and engaging, while spacing messages improves the likelihood that key information is noticed and remembered, reducing the risk of message fatigue.

This approach has proven particularly effective in complex healthcare environments, where communication needs to be clear, consistent, and easy to absorb alongside day-to-day clinical work.

7. Key outcomes and benefits

The introduction of Vibe’s screensaver channel has provided CNWL and CLCH with a reliable, high-visibility communication platform that reached staff every day without adding workload or requiring behavioural change.

Observable outcomes included:

• High visibility of messages across all desktop users, ensuring important updates were consistently seen
• Positive staff feedback, including from frontline teams who appreciated having key information surfaced in a clear, accessible way
• Strong endorsement from senior leaders, who viewed the screensaver channel as a practical solution to longstanding communication challenges
• Improved engagement, demonstrated by staff responding to content, providing suggestions, and requesting longer display times for items such as QR codes
• A more predictable communication rhythm, reducing dependence on email and freeing the Internal Communications team to prioritise message quality and planning

Feedback from Jane Rogers, Head of Internal Communications, reflects the impact:

“In every meeting I go to, people are very excited about the screensavers. They are definitely having an impact. We get lots of positive comments from frontline staff as well, including suggestions like extending the duration of QR codes so they have time to scan them. From everything I have heard, the feedback has been really positive.”

8. What made this successful

Several factors contributed to the effectiveness of the projects:

• Clear alignment between IT and Internal Communications, supported by a structured deployment plan led by Wavenet
• Executive-level support, which helped encourage adoption and reinforced the importance of consistent communication
• A targeted approach to visual communication, ensuring messages were concise, relevant, and immediately understood
• A solution that required no behavioural change from staff, fitting naturally into existing work patterns
• A fast, low-friction rollout, made possible by strong governance and collaboration across teams
• Vibe’s ease of use, enabling communication staff to publish content quickly without IT involvement

Learnings from similar large-scale visual communication projects also applied here. Screensaver and Lock Screen communication is particularly effective in clinical settings because it reaches staff at natural moments in their workflow such as logging in, returning to their desks, or pausing between tasks. It avoids the pitfalls of email overload and cuts through competing messages by placing essential information in a place staff cannot miss.

9. Supporting a broader NHS communication strategy

The combined CNWL and CLCH deployments demonstrate how desktop screensavers can become a valuable part of a broader NHS communication ecosystem.

Email, intranet platforms, team briefings and collaboration tools all serve important purposes. However, no single channel will consistently reach every employee.

The screensaver complements these channels by creating repeated visual exposure to important information throughout the working day.

For healthcare organisations, the channel can help reinforce messages relating to:

• Patient care and clinical priorities
• Employee health and wellbeing
• Organisational strategy and values
• Cybersecurity and information governance
• Learning and mandatory training
• Workplace safety
• Technology changes and service updates
• Staff recognition and organisational culture

By combining desktop screensavers with digital signage, meeting-room displays and other visual touchpoints, NHS organisations can create a more coordinated communication experience across both desk-based and frontline environments.

10. Looking ahead

With Vibe now reaching approximately 16,000 desktop users across CNWL and CLCH, the deployments provide a strong foundation for expanding visual communication across the NHS.

The next opportunity is to connect more workplace communication channels so messages can reach employees wherever they work.

This could include extending communication to: 

• Digital signage screens in shared staff areas
• Microsoft Teams Rooms and meeting spaces
• High priority desktop alert pop-up notifications
• Lock screens and other desktop touchpoints
• Reception areas and public-facing displays