For hospital teams
Digital wayfinding for hospitals
Digital wayfinding replaces the maze of corridor signs with directions people follow on their own phone. In a hospital it has one job: get an anxious visitor from the front door to the right department, on time, without stopping to ask three people on the way.
Why GPS does not work indoors
Satellite positioning is unreliable through concrete, steel and multiple floors, and it cannot tell the difference between Level 2 and Level 3 of the same tower. Beacons and Wi-Fi positioning can, but they mean hardware in every corridor, batteries to replace and a survey to repeat after every refurbishment.
QR markers: positioning you can print
A printed QR code at an entrance, lift lobby or corridor junction tells the app exactly where the visitor is standing, to the metre and to the correct floor. Markers cost pennies, need no power, and a replacement is a sheet of paper away. A visitor who loses their bearings mid-journey simply scans the next code they pass and the route recalculates from there.
Step-free routes as standard
Every link between two points is recorded with whether it involves stairs. Turn on step-free routing and the app only offers lifts and ramps, so wheelchair users, people with prams and patients recovering from surgery get a route that actually works rather than the shortest one on paper.
Closures and moves on the same day
Hospitals change constantly: a corridor shuts for works, a clinic moves to a different wing. Staff mark the closure or move the department in an admin panel, publish, and every visitor is routed around it from that moment. No reprinting, no out-of-date signage on the wall.
The appointment letter as the first marker
Put the main entrance QR code on the appointment letter. The patient scans it at home, arrives with the app already open at the right building, and walks straight in with directions running.
Privacy that survives scrutiny
No visitor account, no device location, no journey history. The camera picture used to read a code is processed on the phone and never leaves it. There is no personal data to breach, which makes information governance sign-off considerably shorter.
What a rollout involves
- 1. Map the building. Record entrances, corridor junctions, lifts, stairs and every destination, floor by floor.
- 2. Place the markers. Print the codes, mount them at eye level at each mapped point.
- 3. Check the accessible routes. Walk each step-free route once before going live.
- 4. Keep it current. Publish closures and department moves as they happen.