Improving patient experience with hospital navigation apps

The hospital navigation applications are the wayfinder for the particular visitor or patient, who is visiting the hospital for any purpose. Patients generally miss their appointments and waste a lot of time while asking about the right directions for the particular office or department. The employees of the hospital also waste a lot of energy and time for directing the visitors and the patients to the right place. The hospital navigation and wayfinding apps help the patients, visitors, carers or anyone to get directed towards the right place through navigation.

These applications support the people to find the right therapy rooms, departments or other locations inside the hospital without roaming around for the signboards or additional help.

These applications work with beacons which are small Bluetooth devices that get aware of the visitor’s location, which helps in assisting with the correction navigation inside the hospital premises.

The only challenge while using the technology is it works within the Bluetooth proximity range; it is essential to know where the beacon is placed for proper connectivity. Also, using Bluetooth for a long time can drain the battery of the smartphone. On the other hand, Patients get frustrated while searching for the therapy rooms or doctor’s cabin in a large hospital building. With the help of these applications, the patients get an indoor wayfinding solution that allows them to search their point of interest without getting their way lost or missing the appointment.

These wayfinding applications make use of internet and GPS technology to work on the smartphone or tablet or iPad successfully. They work with a sensor and beacon technology solution that allows multiple devices to connect to the location for finding the right direction through the signals. The startups working in this domain are reinventing medicine and healthcare through the digital solutions. These digital solutions are mobile applications that are integrated through the programming and coding of the operating system.

Startups developing hospital navigation & wayfinding apps

1. Gozio Health: The application is developed by Gozio Inc for enhancing the patient’s experience in healthcare. It has developed a turnkey mobile platform that delivers indoor navigation, content manager, analytics, data integration, kiosks and turnkey mobile platform to the mobile application user. The application provides four feet accuracy from any indoor destination of the hospital.

Above all, this particular wayfinding app from the company has earned an exclusive endorsement of the American Hospital Association. The application helps the patient in getting confident about reaching the doctor on time without missing the appointment. The application differs from other wayfinding apps as it provides with turn by turn notifications, parking notifications and off route notification for helping the user find the way on time.

2. MediNav: Developed by Connexient, MediNav is a turn by turn mobile navigation app for finding the right direction inside the hospital. It provides the route preview with step-by-step instructions. The indoor positioning of the application is accurate to 1-2 meters.

The app has unique features such as voice guidance and audio prompts for the user.

Additional features of the wayfinding app are off route notifications and recalculation of route time. The application is also available for the web or desktop version.

3. Locatible: The application uses the real-time location system for tracking the right direction inside the hospitals. Kenco Innovation Labs developed Locatible for providing a new platform for the patients to locate the hospital directions. The directions provided by the application are accurate to 5 cm. The app features a unique system of locating the patients inside the hospital using the live map.

The application allows the patient to seek for help immediately by pressing the button over the wrist. The best thing about the app is searching the patients with dementia by using the live map location.

4. Indoor Positioning, Kaleida Health: Kaleida Health develops the Indoor positioning application for locating the patients and visitors of the hospital with the accurate navigation.

With the help of the indoor navigation provided by the app, the patients, carers, and visitors can locate the right department or the doctor or the therapy centre in no time. The additional features of the app are navigation for impaired people, staff locator, tracking of high-cost equipment, doctor nurse locator, reserving of therapy rooms and automatic check-in navigation to the treatment rooms.

5. Wifarer: Wifarer is an indoor positioning app for connecting to the hospital interior routes easily. By using the application on the smartphone, the patients can get seamless navigation for both indoor and outdoor (between the buildings of the hospital). The unique features of the app include turn by turn directions, visitor insights, interactive directories about cafe and restaurants in the hospital, routing for wheelchair accessibility and content management system for updating the app.

6. Mapsindoors: The Mapspeople is one of the most famous platforms that develop digital indoor wayfinding apps such as Mapsindoors for patients and staff. The motto of developing the application is to free the hospital staff from showing the directions to the patients and visitors.

7. Indoora: Indoora’s high precision indoor navigation technology allows visitors to track their real-time location and offers the guide to reach a particular destination in the hospital.

The wayfinding app also helps the hospital management to optimize the use of resources by integrating the traditional signage to the indoor navigation app. It includes all the stairs and elevators for the wayfinding directions. Also, the application doesn’t provide access to the visitors to some parts of the hospital, where it is prohibited.

Mobile apps are here to guide patients

Overall, these wayfinding applications benefit the patients, visitors and hospital staff in various ways. These applications help the hospital staff to concentrate on their work and reduce the interruptions of the team and visitors seeking for directions. The most optimal route for the particular department, doctor or center is navigated for helping the patient to reach on time.

Above all, the different buildings and centers of the same hospital are connected on the map for guiding the patients and visitors on the right route through the elevator, staircase or outdoor way.

The researchers have done a great job by creating the application for the patients as well as the hospital staff, which has significantly helped the healthcare industry for years. These apps are a boon to the healthcare industry, and there is no criticism reported so far for utilizing the application in the said industry.

Image credit: www.indoora.com