One of the biggest hospital radio stations in Sussex is turning to new technology to improve its service to patients.

Coastway Hospital Radio has about 1,500 potential listeners, at the Royal Sussex County and Sussex Eye Hospital, in Brighton, and Worthing Hospital. It is about to install its service at Brighton General Hospital.

Jingles, trailers, fillers, announcements and promotions for other voluntary organisations are being recorded to PCs using Guinevere, a piece of software written by a former staff member, which displays two virtual cartridge tape machines that can be played out from the mixing desks.

Chairman Peter Bailey said: "The software makes everything so much easier after years of using stretched and broken tapes."

Mr Bailey said Coastway was planning to improve its overnight service, currently provided by a mini disc machine.

"Looping a selection of mini discs is not good enough for what we want, especially when you consider patients who don't sleep much."

The station is evaluating various play-out systems, which could be used to compile play lists and to clean up the crackles and pops on vinyl records.

Coastway is also considering networking its existing separate PCs to a server, which would store more music and information on a large hard disc.

The station's music library contains about 70,000 tracks of music, listed on a database to ensure that almost all requests can be met, at least approximately. The database provides a weekly updated chart of the top 200 requests.

The station, founded in 1986 as Worthing Hospital Radio, is a voluntary organisation and a registered charity.

Most of its revenue comes from its outside events unit, a converted caravan used for roadshows.

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