Top 5 Ways to Use Maps and Virtual Tours in Hospitals

A hospital needs to have an informative map to guide its visitors and patients. A map can help ease some of the frustration, as well as the fear of the unknown. Have you ever thought of the true possibilities what you can do with a map. 

But what if you map was more than a map? What if it made your hospital more efficient, friendlier, and more appealing to donors? With today's digital, 3D, and location-aware technology, maps are no longer a 2D approximation of your building's layout. They can be almost anything you need them to be.

Whether you want to make your hospital more user-friendly, track your equipment, make your maintenance team more efficient, or bring your vision to life for donors, maps can do it. Here are the top ways 3D digital maps can do for your hospital.

Asset Tracking

Beds, heart monitors, wheelchairs—just about everything in a hospital is moveable, which can make it very difficult to keep track of all your assets. Implementing a map with an integrated tracking system simplifies inventory checks and allows you to find the correct assets for scheduled maintenance. You can easily locate your assets anywhere in your hospital by leveraging software, tracking devices, and data feeds like on your maps. 

A significant number of equipment manufacturers add tracking-enabled features to their products and any equipment without a tracking system can be easily fitted with RFID tags, customized barcodes, or radio transmitters. All hospital managers worry about HIPPA-compliance issues involved with tracking equipment, but the system does not contain patient information, just information on the assets themselves.

Once all the items have tracking devices, and the data is uploaded to the system, the assets will appear on your digital map. 

Patient Experience

Hospitals are like a maze, where patients and visitors can become lost. The majority of patients and visitors are visiting for the first time. Patients and visitors are already stressed from medical issues, navigating the hospital building should be the least of their problems.

Interactive hospital maps with 360°, videos, and virtual tours can improve patient experience. To ease the minds of patients and visitors, interactive maps can help them "visit" their room before they arrive. Once at the hospital, wayfinding can be integrated into your map for a more efficient way to get visitors to their end location. 

Physician Engagement

Many hospitals who implement digital, interactive maps find that the most frequent users are their own staff. Whether it's newly hired staff orienting themselves to their new environment or long-time staff finding out what updates on what is day to day operations. Interactive maps help everyone get to their end location efficiently.

How many times have you had to explain to a colleague how to get to a meeting or exam room?When Oregon Health and Science University implemented their interactive map, they found that their staff was constantly using it to provide colleagues with directions.

With convenient legends, detailed maps of the facilities and the surrounding areas, and 3D imaging capabilities down to specific floors and rooms. The maps offer both new and old staff a more convenient method to find their way around. You can even add public transportation and broader city-wide maps to help incoming staff find their way to the facility itself.

Energy & Facility Management

Once your floor plans are uploaded into the digital map, you can add all sorts of data tracking to the system. Another convenient aspect of the 3D digital maps is the ability to add energy usage data, HVAC maps, other maintenance maps, and additional facility information.

With all energy usage and facilities data located in one space, managers can detect and diagnose issues more quickly and efficiently. With such a powerful database linked into a location-aware system, your hospital can improve its operational costs and efficiencies. If you plug in the right data points, your 3D map essentially becomes a smart-technology hub.

Having all the HVAC and facilities maps included in your map that is hidden to the public, makes maintenance staffs' lives much easier. It can be difficult enough to traverse a hospital when you're looking for a very visible room. Imagine trying to find the systems hidden in the walls. 

Fundraising

3D maps have the ability to use blueprints for proposed expansions to create 3D renderings of unbuilt areas. Using virtual reality and augmented reality technology, the 3D maps can bring the plans to life. These 3D plans can then be used by fundraising staff to excite donors about potentials of the new space. Fundraisers will no longer have to attempt to explain the plans and atmosphere—they can virtually walk them through it.

These 3D maps of expansions can also help the hospital staff prepare for the new environment. Being able to walk through space virtually will enable facilities management to better plan for equipment and staff placement, plan safety maneuvers, and orient new staff to the new space before its even built.

Digital maps are more than just physical wayfinding tools. They can be strategic tools that help hospitals meet internal goals for efficiency, fundraising, and customer and employee satisfaction. Find out how 3D maps can help your hospital achieve its goals. Contact us today!