How Wayfinding Signage Can Improve Children’s Hospitals

There are currently more than 250 children’s hospitals throughout the U.S., all of them treating millions of children every year for a wide variety of health conditions. Many of these child-care facilities are expansive and intricate buildings, with a lot of their patients and their families having to reside in them for extended stays, often due to the severity of the child-patient’s illness. Because of how intimidating these facilities can be for children of a certain age, more children’s hospitals have started to incorporate engaging, inviting, and informative forms of wayfinding signage in an effort to enhance the patient experience of both the child and their families, throughout the duration of their visit.

While hospital wayfinding has exponentially increased in popularity over the past decade, more and more children’s hospitals have only recently begun to implement interactive wayfinding software into their healthcare facilities. This beneficial trend has not only provided ample digital solutions for the pediatric clinician staff serving the children, but has also helped countless patients navigate their way throughout the caregiving process, as well as install a sense of comfortability during their treatment.

To get a better understanding of just how beneficial these wayfinding strategies have been, let’s take a closer look at how digital and wayfinding signage has improved the accessibility and patient experience of several children’s hospitals throughout the U.S.

Reducing Patient & Family Stress

For over 150 years, the Boston Children’s Hospital has provided exceptional pediatric care to hundreds of thousands of children, evolving into one of the largest children’s hospital clinics in the U.S. and also ranking number one in the U.S. News & World Report for overall pediatric care. However, it wasn’t until 2012 that the Boston Children’s Hospital started to implement digital wayfinding technology into its facilities –– and began to see immediate results.

With an advanced focus on decreasing the stress experienced by patients residing in their massive maze-like facilities, the hospital wanted to find a way to incorporate the rising patient use of smartphones to help enhance overall accessibility and convenience while navigating throughout its 12 buildings and nearly 400 in-patient beds.

The result was a massive mobile wayfinding project that featured dozens of interactive mapping and instant update services, ranging from elevator closings, rerouting updates, office locations, clinician database, and more. Once the digital wayfinding technology was successfully implemented, the service was utilized by more than 4,500 patients within the first six months, with 65 percent of patients using the wayfinding service reporting an improved patient experience.

Vibrant & Imaginative Environments

With more than 100 years of operation under its belt, the Seattle Children’s Hospital is also considered to be one of the more renowned pediatric care clinics in the country. The hospital has also undergone various interior design changes in the past decade to better accommodate child patients through not only interactive digital wayfinding technology, but to help children visually resonate with the environment.

In 2013, the Seattle Children’s Hospital enlisted an effort to increase and improve its digital wayfinding and signage efforts, specifically by making them more visually appealing and engaging with their child patients. They started by organizing their facilities into four ecologically-inspired zones, titled Mountain, Forest, River, and Ocean. Each zone had its own theme, with specific colors, patterns, and names that reflected the zone’s concept, while offering easy-to-remember and more identifiable wayfinding and digital signage navigation resources.

Patient accessibility began to enhance after the concepts were finalized, with the hospital’s intricate wayfinding designs building an emotional connection with the children, providing a calm and inviting environment for the children to navigate their way around.

Enhance Your Patient Experience With Interactive Wayfinding Signage

The patient experience advantages that interactive wayfinding services can bring are seemingly infinite. From improving accessibility and navigation, to spreading awareness and information, to simplifying the check-in and checkout process, more healthcare facilities are utilizing all the benefits of professional wayfinding signage solutions than ever before.

If you’re interested in learning more about how wayfinding signage systems can benefit your healthcare facility, let our team at Oppna Digital help you out! Contact us today to request a demo of our services, or give us a call at 651-237-5677 to speak directly with one of our hospital wayfinding experts.