Since 2004 Folcrom has designed, manufactured and installed more than 100,000 Hospital Bedside Arms of the highest quality. When we talk to our customers or search the internet we have found that our products are known by many different names. There does not seem to be any clear consensus around the world of what to call these products. Some of the different words used are of course based on people looking for different types of arms, but based on our conversations, there is still a lot of confusion. And that is just in English, imagine if we started looking all the the other languages of the world?
Some of the many iteration we have found used:
- Gas Spring Arms
- Hospital Monitor Arms
- Hospital Bedside Arms
- Bedside Terminal Arm
- Medical Bedside Arm
- LCD Terminal Arm
- LCD Monitor Arm
- Patient Terminal Arm
- Patient Bedside Terminal Arm
- Articulating Arms
- Monitor Arm
- Wall Mount Monitor Arm
- Patient Bed Arm
- And more…
There is of course no right or wrong name as long as it describes the usage intended.
Most of the names will include words like “hospital, healthcare and medical” since our arms are mostly used in healthcare and the products are designed with the hospital environment in mind with the easy to clean design and antibacterial paint, but they could of course be used in many other environments like warehouses or factories. Various iterations of users also make sense. In a hospital, the arms and terminals on them are not used only by patients but also by doctors, nurses and perhaps even visiting friends and relatives.
“Gas Spring Arms” makes sense since the arms use our patented gas springs to ensure the arm is very easy to move and still stays still where you need it.
Terms with “LCD” for Liquid Crystal Display makes sense since most displays that will be mounted at the end of our arms will be LCD. Most people searching for an “LCD Monitor Arm” is probably still meaning it as opposed to a CRT (the old “fat” TVs). As fewer and fewer people have fresh memories of those monstrosities, these searches will perhaps go down? Will also be interesting to see if as other display technologies like OLED becomes more and more popular if we start seeing searches for OLED Terminal Arms of OLED Monitor Arms.
Terminal or Monitor? In most cases our customers mount a terminal or PC that runs software that gives patients access to communication and entertainment and doctors and nurses to patient data. If with monitor we mean just a screen like a TV without any processing power of its own, that is of course also valid terminology even though these days with smart TVs, the distinction is certainly blurring.
Folcrom offers several different kinds of arms. Our FX300 is an articulating arm, meaning that it folds up and away in an “A” or inverted “V” shape.
At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what they call our products as long as they find us. We will continue to design and manufacture our arms and the mounting solutions with the same level of enthusiasm and quality.