How to Select the Right Digital Wayfinding System for Your Patients

We regularly engage in discussions with hospitals that have recently discovered the added value of digital wayfinding.

Once a hospital has gathered internal support to seriously explore the implementation of a mobile wayfinding system, the real search begins. People have seen all sorts of claims on social media, making it difficult to make the right decisions. So, what should you be looking for, and how do you make proper comparisons?

Each vendor has its own vision, but which one makes the most sense? A great first step is to visit a location where the solution is already in place and try it out for yourself. This gives you an immediate sense of whether or not it works for your needs. If that’s not feasible, ask for an in-depth conversation with at least two reference clients. That can be very helpful. If that still feels complicated or insufficient, your best bet is to test it within your own environment.

But how do you go about doing that? And what exactly should you be testing to make sure you draw the right conclusions?

Proof of Concept

If you want to conduct a proper test, you’ll need to dedicate sufficient time to it. Simply installing the system for a single route and experimenting for one or a few days won’t give you meaningful results.

First, you need to understand what you aim to learn from the test. What are the things you don’t currently know but would like to find out? Defining this is not as easy as it seems, because you may not fully know what you should be finding out.

Below, we’ll guide you through what we believe is the best way to determine whether a digital wayfinding system meets your needs or not.

Setting Up Your Trial

Before you can start collecting feedback, you need to think carefully about how you will set up the trial.

To gather reliable feedback, you’ll need to create a representative demo deployment. This means not just setting up a simple, short route of 40 meters with 2-3 easy-to-follow turns that wouldn’t need any assistance. Instead, offer complex routes to your testers that will truly put the system to the test.

We recommend selecting 7-8 Points of Interest (POIs) within the hospital, particularly in areas that are difficult to find and where there have been numerous complaints. These shouldn’t just be routes from the main entrance to these POIs, but also routes between the POIs. After all, there will be many cross-references due to multiple appointments that may take place on the same day.

Objectives

How you conduct a trial/POC is closely tied to what you want to learn during the trial. So, what are your trial objectives? It is very important to clearly differentiate between your business objectives and your trial objectives. Your trial objectives are more measurable goals that contribute to your overall business objectives. The business objectives, and the belief that mobile wayfinding can contribute to them, are the reasons for conducting such a test.

Business Objectives

Your general business objective for deploying a digital wayfinding solution is to enhance the patient experience. Today’s patients increasingly expect a retail-like experience with effective, personalized, and empathetic communication. Ultimately, you want patients to feel more comfortable and not distracted, as they have other concerns on their minds.

Another business objective relates to operational efficiency. Digital wayfinding will increase patient autonomy, reduce interruptions to medical staff, and decrease late or missed appointments.

These are general business objectives.

Trial Objectives

We advise hospitals to focus on the following critical points when crafting trial objectives:

• Performance: Will people easily find their way using the solution? Does it perform as expected?

• Experience: Do people like it? Will it enhance the patient experience?

• Adoption: What can we expect in terms of user adoption?

• Adapting to Changes: How will the solution adapt to changes in the hospital environment?

When comparing different solutions head-to-head, it is important to ensure a fair comparison.
Some vendors offer both a version that works exclusively within an app and another that operates through a browser. The app version provides real-time location information, whereas the browser-based solution only displays a map with a planned route overlay. These are two entirely different solutions and should be treated as such, with both being thoroughly tested across all relevant factors. Otherwise, you're essentially comparing apples to oranges.

Performance
This first research question is measurable, preferably over time and across multiple Points of Interest (POIs). Here are some methods to gather this data, and we recommend doing them all:

• Organize test days where you ask people heading to mapped POIs to participate in a patient test. You should have at least 30-50 participants to provide feedback. You can observe them and ask them to answer a few questions afterward.

• Install 8 QR codes at the entrance and near the welcome desk, allowing staff to direct people to the 8 POIs and also see how self-scanning works.

• Include a wayfinding link in the appointment notifications for personalized instructions.

Experience
The second research question can be addressed with a simple survey featuring a single question with multiple-choice answers, such as a 5-point Likert scale.

For example:
“How did you like the experience of this wayfinding tool?” with a rating from 1 to 5.
You could extend it to 2 or 3 questions, but keep it simple. Ideally, you want to capture the feedback data within the solution itself.

Adoption
Understanding what it takes to drive adoption is perhaps the most crucial question. Your organization is on the verge of investing significantly in a patient experience and engagement solution. A wayfinding solution won’t generate users out of nowhere; it requires smart adoption strategies and effective promotion. This is an ongoing process, similar to managing a website's reach.

Your organization needs to understand how easy it is to drive adoption for the solution. The higher the adoption, the better your ROI.

This cannot be tested in just a couple of days; much more time is needed.

A key element is integrating personalized wayfinding information into the appointment notification. We recommend testing this, focusing on how easy it is to integrate and how effective the conversion is in a live environment.

Adapting to Changes
Every hospital is subject to changes, with regular relocations occurring. During the POC, you might want to simulate these common scenarios to see what you can expect in the coming years when changes arise.

We recommend testing two common scenarios (virtually):

• Relocating a clinic.

• Closing a corridor due to construction work.

There may be other scenarios to simulate, but these two are the most important ones to test.

Take Your Time

There’s no point in organizing a demo for just a few days. The answers you’re looking for won’t be clear within 2-3 days. We recommend taking at least 2 months to test various scenarios and gather both quantitative and qualitative feedback from users. This feedback will provide the answers you need and will allow you to make a well-balanced decision.