Getting to a patient’s room or finding the right clinic for an appointment can be stressful, but Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) leaders believe a mobile app, called WalkWays, as well as a texting tool that provide easily understood, visual directions will help everyone find their way.
In 2014, then Nashville Mayor Karl Dean unveiled a “wayfinding app” at Music City Center, the city’s 1.2 million-square-foot convention center. The app uses low-energy Bluetooth signals from a user’s smartphone that interact with wall-mounted beacons. The app then sends photo-based, step-by-step directions to a requested location, such as the nearest restaurant, to the user’s phone.
VUMC leaders decided they wanted a similar system added to the Medical Center’s miles of hallways. They learned a Vanderbilt University faculty member, Jules White, Ph.D., assistant professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was the brain behind the system’s technology. White had created a startup company, called ZH Solutions, through CTTC to provide indoor positioning systems in large buildings, and he was thrilled to bring the technology to the Medical Center campus.
“For something the size and scope of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, it takes a lot of thought to ensure we’ve catalogued everything a patient would need to find, and in a way that’s going to be intuitive to the patient,” said White. “The installation of the technology itself was fairly easy. One thing that was challenging was to get good photos of places in the Medical Center that are very rarely empty.”