Akron Children’s Hospital Heads Back To The Future, Unfurling Its History On Digital Wall

The new 30-foot wall display across from Rubber City Coffee at Akron Children’s Hospital beckons adults to come and play. Five side-by-side touch screens glow blue with history. Each is filled with color-coded categories like Trivial Pursuit. And users who linger can drill down into the digital timeline to learn fun facts similar to the style of “Pop-Up Video” on VH-1.A touch of a screen reveals, for instance, that 1978 was a banner year: The world’s first successful “test-tube” baby was born in Great Britain, a Georgia artist created soft-sculpted dolls that became known as Cabbage Patch Kids, and Akron Children’s Hospital built a 59-bed neonatal intensive care unit capable of caring for the smallest and sickest of newborns.William Considine, the hospital’s president and chief executive since 1979, revealed the high-tech timeline to staff this week, saying “status quo is our worst enemy.” The sleek touch-screen technology replaces a series of relics behind glass that had served as the hospital’s timeline, including a small Goodyear blimp, a Christmas tree representing the hospital’s annual Holiday Tree Festival and a Pinkie the Puppet, a small toy given to patients between 1956 and 2015.