Children’s hospital in Scotland leads the way on adding navigation tech for patients, staff

The introduction of wayfinding technology at a children’s hospital in Scotland started with a casual conversation among coworkers.

Olivia Swann, a pediatric infectious disease consultant at regional healthcare provider National Health Service (NHS) Lothian, recalled chatting with her colleagues at the 242-bed Royal Hospital for Children and Young People about how much time they spend giving directions to patients and their families.

“Children’s Hospital in Edinburgh is beautiful. It’s new. But it’s just not simple to find your way around,” Swann told us. In fact, an internal survey of 100 families indicated that 40% of respondents needed help finding their way around the facility.

“It wasn’t great for families when they were arriving at a time where it’s stressful and they’re anxious,” Swann added. “And if doctors and nurses are spending all their time guiding people around, then we can’t do the stuff that we need to do.”

Seeking solutions

Swann did some research on navigation tools, which led her to wayfinding app Waymap. It stood out to her because, unlike many other navigation apps, it didn’t require WiFi, GPS, or a cell signal—important, because the hospital is “like a black hole.”

Swann also liked that the app was designed for users with visual impairments due to its accessibility benefits. “It already is designed with accessibility at its very heart,” she said. “It’s not tacked on later.”

Waymap uses inertial measurement sensors, which are built into smartphones and track the phone’s movement. AI algorithms use this information to estimate the user’s step length and direction. The app then spits out “turn-by-turn, step-by-step” audio directions and on-screen instructions. It’s being used in shopping centers, sports stadiums, and public transit systems in nearly a dozen cities, including London and Washington, DC.

The app integrates with local transit schedules, and project leaders envision hospital visitors using it to navigate from their home to the department or room they’re visiting.

Swann brought the idea to introduce wayfinding technology at the hospital to Roslyn Neely, the CEO of Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity, an independent organization that supports the hospital.

“It just fitted very much with what we are trying to achieve all the time, which is to reduce the anxiety and the fear of the unknown,” Neely said. “It felt strange that I can go online and look at the inside of a restaurant that I might go to tonight for dinner, but I wouldn’t be able to see where I was going to take my child for an X-ray. So it was just such a brilliant idea, and we were delighted to be able to provide the funding.”

Waymap also helped defray the undisclosed cost to make it as affordable as possible, according to Neely. Swann and Neely also got buy-in from NHS Lothian’s senior leadership, who they said quickly saw the value in the idea.

Navigating healthcare

Celso Zuccollo, Waymap’s CEO, told us company leaders have long wanted to get into the healthcare sector because they felt that the complicated, high-stress nature of hospitals “lend themselves really well to our technology.” But given some of the complexities of getting a toehold in the UK industry, the company never proactively sought out healthcare contracts—until Waymap heard from the team in Edinburgh.

Waymap went live for patients at the children’s hospital Feb. 11. The company claims the children’s hospital is the first in the world to introduce this specific type of personal navigation tech, though other healthcare systems have introduced technology such as wayfinding apps and electronic kiosks to improve the patient experience and help visitors more easily find their way. Overlook Medical Center in New Jersey, for example, offers access to an app that provides GPS directions to help users find the closest parking garage.

Zuccollo said he sees big opportunities in healthcare, and that Waymap is in discussions with unnamed healthcare providers in North America and Singapore about adopting the app.

“Compared to a train station environment or a sports stadium environment, people are in a very different frame of mind when they enter a hospital, and that poses a unique challenge for distribution,” Zuccollo said.

To prepare for the launch in Edinburgh, Waymap employees created a digital twin of the hospital by using a scanner with lasers to map the space in 3D. Waymap is also developing a web app, which would be lower quality but wouldn’t require downloading an app, and is working to make its technology available in customers’ apps.

“App fatigue is definitely a real thing. And it’s a question we get from a lot of our clients: ‘Does somebody really want to download another application just to make this feasible?’” Zuccollo acknowledged. “So we’ve actually been responsive to that, and in about six weeks time, we will be launching our own software development kit. It’s essentially a set of LEGO blocks that allows us to plug our functionality into that healthcare provider’s own app, if they have one.”

And to make the user experience as seamless as possible, Swann and Neely are working to get a QR code for the Waymap app added to letters that patients get ahead of their appointments. They also hope to eventually make the app available in the 10 most common languages used by the hospital system’s patients: English, Polish, Arabic, Ukrainian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Urdu, Romanian, Spanish, and Bengali, according to Swann. Three of those languages are currently available on the Waymap app, and Waymap plans to add four others in the coming weeks.

“Imagine that you’re a family turning up in the hospital at nighttime where there’s nobody around to ask. You don’t understand the signage. The hospital wards have got very weird names; some of them named after lovely, fancy castles in Scotland, which doesn’t mean anything to you,” Swann said. “It’s one more way to try and make it less scary and less stressful, and we need to do that as much as we can.”