The 3 Main Reasons Why ‘AR Wayfinding’ Won’t Work in Hospitals (today).

“Are you filming me, sir?'“

AR wayfinding is a total hype, just like Blue Dot indoor navigation was in 2014. With the emergence of platforms/plugins/solutions like PTC Vuforia, Unity, Mapbox, Matterport, ARKit, etc., creating a simple AR wayfinding application is easy. Social Media is full of mockups, demos, and even some real-life deployments of AR wayfinding. Admittedly, it looks fun and impressive, but supporting wayfinding is more than just projecting a few AR elements on a straightforward path.

These platforms lack a critical wayfinding knowledge base necessary for robust support across various scenarios. This issue could be solved, but it would be a long, time-consuming process to translate a comprehensive knowledge base into rules and logic for the numerous use cases.

There are also smaller issues that could be solved over time, such as the rapid battery drain. For instance, walking a couple of 100-meter paths can quickly drain around 20% of the battery.

But what are the three main reasons why AR wayfinding won’t work in hospitals?

There are three issues that are virtually unsolvable, making AR as a concept – especially in the coming years – impractical for wayfinding support in hospitals.

1) ‘Sir, are you filming?’

Almost all AR wayfinding apps scan the environment as you walk. The motion sensors in your phone generate signals that can be used to track your movement; however, these signals are always noisy. As a result, the app often requires taking photos with your camera and comparing them to a 3D scan of the building to determine your exact location indoors. Using some calculations and computer vision (you might call it "AI," but it’s not rocket science), the phone quickly recalculates your location. The motion sensors then track your movement again until the drift becomes too large, requiring you to lift your phone to reinitialize your exact location.

In short, you have to hold your phone straight in front of your face so you can both see the projected path on your camera view and give the phone the opportunity to take continuous photos; otherwise, the application stops working.

People around you think you’re filming. Try it: everyone gives you strange looks, and in a hospital, this is quickly seen as a major invasion of privacy.

The number of times that colleagues and I have been confronted by hospital staff while taking project photos is countless. They often ask, “Sir, are you filming?” Hospital staff can get very upset.

2) AR wayfinding only works in an app

Patients must first download an app to use your digital wayfinding tool. Let me be brief: that’s not going to happen.

People don’t download an app solely to find their way in a building they only visit occasionally. Not in a hospital, not in a university, not in a supermarket (which doesn’t make sense anyway), airport, etc. It’s just not going to happen.

Don’t believe it?

Look up wayfinding apps on Google Play and check the number of downloads since they were first published. And remember, that includes downloads from people who have since deleted the app. The numbers are shockingly low, even for wayfinding apps with over 100 buildings.

So, investing in a mobile wayfinding tool that requires app downloads is a waste of money.

3) Siloed / Non-Interoperability

The fact that a solution only works within a single app makes it siloed. The trend in healthcare is moving toward integration, where different value-adding solutions must be able to communicate with each other, often on top of a scheduling system or EHR. Interoperability is key, and systems that adopt a siloed approach offer no added value.

For Digital Front Door (DFD) apps—where users can view and modify appointments, access lab results, and more—developers use SDKs (Software Development Kits). These are snippets of code that iOS/Android app developers integrate into their applications. However, this approach is a nightmare: it takes an enormous amount of time, rarely works as intended, and is nearly impossible to manage. Modern applications typically have DevOps pipelines organized to push updates to production 2–3 times per week. This is impossible - at least a nightmare - with SDKs. Once integrated, the apps are rarely updated again because keeping the DFD app and SDK versions aligned requires immense effort. Every IT department dreads this process.

Non-interoperability is disastrous for any digital solution in the healthcare ecosystem. Digital wayfinding information must be shareable across all relevant touchpoints—not just in a DFD app but also in patient portals, emails, SMS reminders, kiosks, welcome desks, volunteer tablets, narrowcasting screens, and more.

Interoperability is not just an option; it is a necessity for creating meaningful digital solutions in healthcare.

Conclusion

AR Wayfinding may look impressive, but the underlying technology currently prevents widespread adoption.

Eyedog is therefor holding off on releasing its Proof of Concept until the technology has further developed. We believe that if, one day, we can follow a simple line anywhere, anytime, without the need of downloading an app, also without disturbing others, it will indeed be very convenient.

However, we are still far from reaching that point…