The entertainment technology at St. Joseph's General Hospital has been shut down and removed for troubleshooting purposes.Health Resource Group (HRG) Inc. — which installed 160 prototype touch-pad personal access terminals at no cost to the hospital — was at St. Joseph's last week to assess ongoing problems with the system.According to HRG CEO Ken Grant, the servers and operating systems were removed and taken back to the company's office in Vancouver for further testing, with the expectation that the system will be back at the hospital within 30 days, problems fixed."We decided just to shut it down and (we will) reboot it in 30 days with everything up and running," said Grant. "I think having the gear here in our lab gives us the ability to use the gear that was installed there and see where the software actually sits and see what was causing grief that we were having."We can actually run it 24 hours a day so that we can see it under stress and put the stress test on it before it goes back in (St. Joseph's) and then it should be stable."Grant noted problems with scalability, meaning the system's ability to function during high traffic.The equipment was installed in fall 2010 as a pilot project. The terminals boasted television, Internet, entertainment such as movies and games, telephone, a customer satisfaction survey, an option for ordering food with a menu based on the patient’s needs and a call nurse button, which uses a video connection.However, the system had intermittent functionality problems when working, and at other times it shut down completely, leaving hospital patients without any electronic entertainment during their stays.On Friday, St. Joseph's president and CEO Jane Murphy noted past system access issues had been resolved by HRG but the current situation is a concern to the hospital."We certainly see this as a serious matter," said Murphy. "It is important to us as an organization that we're able to offer this to our patients. It's fairly standard to have access to television while you're in the hospital, and this really is something that does need to be resolved and addressed and we do have concerns."According to Murphy, St. Joe's will continue to work with HRG, and has offered help from its information technology staff, but she also noted the hospital will look at other options for entertainment."We're working with HRG, and we will also explore other options in regards to this as needed," said Murphy. "Any time you're dealing with a service that is not meeting a level of performance then any organization needs to look at other options, you know, really on behalf of their patients."Grant noted HRG has spent over $1 million on its prototype system to date, so it's in the company's best interest to ensure the system is working properly. He said the hardware appears to be fine, and the issues seem to be with the software, which he is confident HRG will be able to fix.Bill Stevenson, a patient at St. Joe's a few weeks ago, told the Record last week about his frustration with the system before it shut down completely; he said the phone option wouldn't work, only a handful of television channels worked and he couldn't sign into his e-mail account, among other issues.But, he also found it difficult finding help to operate the system and finding someone at the hospital to answer his questions. He saw a poster advertising the costs — $2.95 for an hour, $8.95 for three hours, or $149.95 for a month — but he said the posters did not display much more information about the system.Grant said two HRG staff live in Courtenay and Comox and are on-call 24 hours per day, seven days per week. However they weren't utilized over the last while."The previous administration basically cut them off and figured that we didn't need that kind of service, which is wrong," said Grant, adding the company recently underwent internal restructuring and these two HRG employees are now either on-site or available by phone all the time again.Murphy said St. Joe's staff can often offer help to patients as well."Certainly within the organization there's some level of knowledge and often we're able to support patients with that," said Murphy, adding the hospital also plans to talk to HRG about more on-site help for patients.Users have not had to pay for the service since December but some have paid without knowing this and they have been reimbursed, according to Grant.writer@comoxvalleyrecord.com