Using Digital Wayfinding to Enhance the Healthcare Experience

Healthcare campuses are rapidly becoming more massive and confusing than ever before. But with the ever-growing trend toward digital solutions, hospitals can navigate their growth with greater ease than ever— and visitors and patients can, too.

At Oppna Digital, through our work with a variety of hospitals, we’ve taken a deep look into the challenges healthcare campuses face in regard to efficiency, visitor experience, patient services, and occupant well-being. Below, we’re covering a few ways hospitals can solve these difficulties via digital wayfinding technology.

Help Visitors & Patients Find Their Way

Most healthcare campuses are notoriously difficult to navigate. Whether it’s the parking lot, the lobby area, or the multiple floors and departments, finding one’s way through a bustling hospital can be an overwhelming, stressful experience. But with digital wayfinding technology, both mobile, website integrations and on-premise kiosk solutions, inefficient hospital wayfinding can be a thing of the past.

Digital technology offers visitors, patients, physicians, nurses, and other facility employees the ability to navigate the property—both indoor and outdoor—with ease via user-friendly, interactive mapping. Here’s how it works:

• Users search for their destination or practitioner on the wayfinding interface
• The technology analyzes the facility for the fastest, most direct route to the destination without using restricted areas
• Incorporate check-in location for specific departments prior to arriving for an appointment
• The user then receives an easy-to-understand, interactive map of the best route
• Using text-to-phone capabilities, users can opt-in for turn-by-turn directions to their mobile device
• With real-time updates, if a route is particularly congested or blocked for any reason, the software will quickly locate an alternative route and direct the user appropriately

Digital hospital wayfinding doesn’t just help lessen visitor and patient confusion; it allows healthcare employees to use their time more efficiently and productively. Rather than interrupting their workflow to help guests navigate the space, employees can direct guests to various strategically placed kiosks throughout the facility.

Another key navigational issue digital wayfinding improves upon is the ever-present problem of parking. In a large healthcare campus, multiple buildings and parking lots can present a rather confusing challenge, especially for elderly patients and those suffering from chronic, painful conditions. But with digital wayfinding capabilities at visitors’ fingertips, attempting to locate a vehicle amongst a sea of parked cars can be easier than ever. 

Digital Wayfinding Improves the Visitor Experience

In a healthcare setting, improving the guest experience centers around implementing adjustments that make the facility more user friendly. In a large healthcare campus, things are constantly in flux: doctors move buildings, departments change floors, new locations are added—the list goes on and on.

Within that ever-changing environment, how do visitors know where to go? Without digital mapping and content, updating static signage can often become an ever-growing resource strain, and one that often falls into neglect. Patients get confused, frustrated, and end up late to their appointments. Visitors can’t find their loved ones; staff endure constant interruptions—it’s an inefficient, outdated system all around.

With digital wayfinding, hospitals not only enjoy greater operational efficiency, but they also cater to the needs of their patients and visitors. And as with any operation, the better the guest experience, the higher the bottom line.

But wait—there’s more! Beyond improving operational efficiency and visitor navigation, wayfinding technology also allows healthcare campuses to implement a variety of helpful services to improve the guest experience. Healthcare campuses can:

• Inform visitors about healthcare news, facility updates, and alerts
• Allow patients to self-schedule appointments via the system
• Integrate EMR - electronic medical records for check-in and updates
• Send patients medication reminders and important info
• Educate users on key points of interest, dining options, etc.

Providing additional information and services via the technology allows hospitals to deliver a more comprehensive concierge experience for each patient. Visitors appreciate the attention to detail and concern for occupant well-being, which helps any healthcare facility stand out from the competition.

Looking for Hospital Wayfinding? Contact Oppna Digital Today

If you’re ready to witness how interactive digital wayfinding can transform your healthcare facility, our team at Oppna Digital is ready to show you. As a full-service digital solutions provider, we specialize in wayfinding software development, hardware procurement, content management, app development, and much more. To learn more about our digital solutions and how we can help your facility maximize efficiency and revenue, give our team a call at 651-237-5677 or reach out to us on our contact page. Ready to see our solutions in action? Feel free to request your demo online!