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Written by Geoff Halstead

Category: HiMSS

Published: 04 March 2016

• Patient Experience
• Digital Wayfinding
• API+SDK
• HiMSS2016

After a very hectic but rewarding and exciting week at HIMSS16, it is time to catch our breath and take stock. Here are our take-aways from the show on the status of Digital Wayfinding, Navigation and Location-based Services in Healthcare.

The Market Has Arrived

What we saw at HIMSS16 mirrors what we have seen generally over the last couple of quarters: the market has arrived!  Digital Wayfinding and Indoor Navigation are no longer a new concept, to be considered and explored, with perhaps a pilot. Rather, we are seeing fully funded, well defined RFPs, and requests for quotations for multiple sites and Enterprise network deployments.

Yes, in this there will always of course be some mix of pilots. But there are many forward leaning healthcare networks that want to positively impact Patient Experience with best-in-class Digital Wayfinding and Indoor Navigation right now.

Integration is the Next Step: The Airline Check-in Model

Connexient CEO, Mark Green presenting and discussing the "Airline Check-in Model" user experience at HX360.

For many of our clients, there is a keen understanding that the real value and ROI from Digital Wayfinding and Indoor Navigation will come when it gets integrated into other key components of Patient Experience. One of the most important of these is Appointment Scheduling. This is where Connexient has been pioneering an innovative user experience that we call the Airline Check-in Model with the following benefits:

1. enhance patient experience, making it easy to get to where the patient or visitor wants to go;
2. minimize the stress of patients and visitors face in navigating a large, complex facility;
3. reduce missed or late appointments – capturing lost revenue; and
4. optimize resource utilization by improving enterprise visibility of inbound appointments.

Last week, we announced a partnership with HackensackUMC to bring this from concept to reality. And at HIMSS16, we began fleshing out plans with other clients to do the same.

The Understanding of Indoor Mapping & Navigation as an Enterprise Solution

As important as Digital Wayfinding and Indoor Navigation is to solving a major pain point in Patient and Visitor Experience, Connexient has always emphasized that this is really just the first step.  Connexient’s driving vision and product roadmap is to Location-Enable the Enterprise, enabling, via our API + SDK, navigation-quality indoor maps and location services to be integrated into applications across patient experience, operations, security, facility management and more.    There are then multiple streams of ROI to be gained from each additional integration.

We are actively planning and moving down that roadmap with the National Institutes of Health. At HIMSS16, we began to flesh this out with several other clients.

Working with Stanley

There was also great enthusiasm from mutual clients about the opportunities for ROI and value to patients and staff that can be delivered through our partnership with Stanley Healthcare. The next phase of this collaboration will be very exciting!

Look for Announcements to Come!

So, all-in-all HIMSS16 was the capstone on the next phase in the growth of the market and of Connexient.   Look for lots of news and announcements that will come out of HIMSS16 in the months to come!
 

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Details

Written by Geoff Halstead

Category: Connexient

Published: 23 February 2016

• Patient Experience
• MediNav
• API+SDK

We are very proud to announce today that HackensackUMC deploying MediNav™ in partnership to drive innovation, transformation and Enterprise ROI in Healthcare that will encompass two tracks of innovation.

1. an Enterprise deployment of MediNav™ Navigator Edition 2.0 using the Connexient SDK + API to implement an innovative “Airline check-in model” for Patient Experience; and
2. a collaboration to develop pioneering Indoor Navigation and Augmented Reality features on Google’s revolutionary Project Tango platform.

Making the Airline Check-in Model a Reality

A focal point for Connexient and HackensackUMC will be to develop and pioneer an innovative "Airline Check-in Model" for patient experience where digital wayfinding, navigation and location services are integrated with appointment scheduling and patient flow solutions. When fully deployed, this model will bring multiple benefits to HackensackUMC and its patients:

1. enhance patient experience, making it easy to get to where the patient or visitor wants to go;
2. minimize the stress of patients and visitors face in navigating a large, complex facility;
3. reduce missed or late appointments – capturing lost revenue; and
4. optimize resource utilization by improving enterprise visibility of inbound appointments.

Our First SDK + API Deployment

HackensackUMC will leverage the Connexient API + SDK to integrate MediNav maps, routing, directions and navigation into the new HackensackUMC mobile app patient engagement mobile application, Web site and patient portal. This is another huge and very exciting milestone for Connexient. While the initial integration focused on the problem of Patient Experience is important, the Connexient SDK + API also enables our clients to integrate MediNav maps, navigation and location services into applications and platforms across the Enterprise, such as operations (staff and clinical workflow), asset tracking, security, facility management and more. Each integration will bring increasing ROI to the Enterprise and benefits to the end users.

Pushing the Envelope with Project Tango

 Connexient and HackensackUMC will also partner in a second track to develop first a prototype and then pilot a mobile application built on Google’s revolutionary Project Tango platform with two vectors:

1. Indoor Navigation. Applying Tango as an actual solution for indoor “positioning” and navigation.
2. Augmented Reality. Leveraging Tango unique ability to “see the world as humans do” for a variety of Augmented Reality use cases for navigating and interacting with physical environments.

Working with a Visionary Healthcare IT Leader

“At Hackensack University Medical Center, we are dedicated to healthcare transformation and continuous improvement of the patient experience. We see Indoor Navigation and Location-based Services as a key to solving the challenges patients, visitors – and even team members – face in getting through a large, complex facility such as ours. Our work together with Google’s Project Tango will further push this envelope of innovation with a truly revolutionary leap forward in how mobile devices can understand and interact with the world around them.”

Now It’s Time to Get to Work!

At Connexient, we know taking innovation from an idea to reality take careful planning, hard work and collaboration. The benefits of both of these concepts will only be gained through careful integration not just technically, but ensuring that data flows in both directions and delivers the right information at the right time in an actionable way for the people that use it - whether that be the patient or the hospital staff or caregiver.

We look forward to starting that work today with Hackensack UMC!

Are You Going to HIMSS2016?

Please come see us!

Or schedule a Webex meeting to learn more about the MediNav and the Airline Check-in Model.

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Details

Written by Geoff Halstead

Category: Digital Wayfinding

Published: 03 August 2015

• Indoor Navigation
• Indoor Mapping
• MediNav

Uber Can Seem Like Magic

If you are the Digital Native type, it's hard to imagine the world now without Uber. If you try hard, you can think back to those days - a couple of years ago! - when we all actually would have to call for a taxi. If you were lucky enough to get a person called a 'dispatcher', there was usually a long and uncertain wait ahead.

Or think of all that wasted energy spent in any major urban city when the rain starts falling, waving hopelessly at cabs that are all full.

Uber changed all of that - instantly it seemed, almost like someone had waved a magic wand. You open an app, request a car and within seconds you receive a confirmation and estimated time or arrival that is usually just a few minutes later. You calmly finish sipping your coffee and stroll outside to meet your private driver. All that for a substantial discount off the same ride in a taxi.

But There's No Magic: Just Navigation Quality Positioning and Maps - and Smartphones

But Uber is not magic. It is just a tremendously compelling example of the transformational power of combining:

1. navigation quality positioning;
2. navigation quality maps; and
3. ubiquitous smartphones.

Once those three foundations are in place, the rest is all software. Add a few crucial pieces of business logic and filtering and suddenly, thousands of independent actors - drivers on one side and people looking for a ride on the other - are able to self-organize a hyper-efficient operation for ride sharing.

None of this is meant to diminish Uber's achievement in the quality of its user experience, technical execution, incredibly rapid scaling and operational expertise. It's simply to point out that from the standpoint of software, there is nothing particularly unique or difficult about it.

Navigation Quality Positioning and Maps Will Create Similar Opportunities for Efficiency Gains Indoors

To us this seems blindingly obvious. Sure, the first "killer application" of high quality indoor positioning and maps is navigation, and that is where we have focused our energies as we entered the market.

But that truly is just the tip of the iceberg. Navigation itself is really just an enabling User Experience. We always start our product meetings by reminding ourselves that no patient or visitor to a hospital comes to have "an Indoor Navigation experience." They come to get to their appointment. Our mission is to make that as painless - hopefully even pleasurable - and efficient as possible, and Indoor Navigation is one of the best ways to achieve that.

But we also spend a lot of time thinking about what other users and use cases would benefit from navigation - and navigation quality maps and indoor positioning. The list is a long one - ranging across operations, work flow, security, facility management an more.

It is absolutely clear that over time all the same benefits in terms of operations, logistics, analytics and business intelligence that have accrued from outdoor GPS and navigation will translate to large, complex indoor facilities, campuses and networks. 

The Uber-ization of the Enterprise

We call this concept the Uber-ization of the Enterprise. Sure - in part because its a catchy phrase. But it also captures what is essential - and somewhat underappreciated today - about the revolution of Indoor Mapping, Navigation and Location-services. That is: there is no one killer app, but rather successive waves of innovation to come, each with increasing efficiency gains.

When the government blasted all those GPS satellites into space and NavTech (far before Google) set about building navigation quality maps of the world, nobody was thinking about competing with taxis. And even Uber itself is no longer thinking about competing just with taxis, but more generally about "revolutionizing transportation and logistics."

So yes, its not a stretch in our view to think that we can help our Enterprise clients - or more specifically the people that must get around their very large and complex facilities, campuses and networks - to self-organize and coordinate their navigation and flow to achieve big gains in efficiency.

One Example:   Our New Shuttle Tracker Feature

We are going to be breaking new ground in a number of important areas in our deployments this Fall. . One that speaks to directly to this concept is integrating the location data of campus shuttle vans directly into our mobile application. Here we can take advantage of our unique ability to:

1. close the gap between the Indoor Map and the Outdoor Map; 
2. track the position of the user; and
3. integrate and display the position of other users - or in this case vehicles;

to provide a service that is truly compelling, useful - and transformative in at least this small part of the user experience.

Our Shuttle Tracker feature will enable us to show users:

1. where the nearest shuttle van is currently on the map; 
2. provide its estimated time of arrival to the pick-up location closest to that user; and of course
3. get that user to their pick-up location efficiently and on time to meet their shultte with turn-by-turn indoor navigation.

No - these are shuttle vans - so you won't be to order one to come pick you up on demand. Not yet, anyways! But that's definitely the direction this can head.

In the meantime, we can make the user's experience of waiting for that van a lot better by giving them visibility into what is going on. No more staring at your watch and wondering. Sip your coffee and relax! Or, if you are just leaving an appointment, we can provide your estimated time-to-destination inside the building- and compare that to the Van - to check if you will make the next pick-up!

This is just the first step. It's not too hard to imagine where we can go step-by-step as the app is deployed Enterprise wide - to caregivers, operations, security, drivers, vendors - anyone that needs to get around this enormous campus and complex buildings.

Stay tuned for more on that as we get closer to launch!

Would you like to learn how Connexient MediNav can bring Indoor Navigation and Shuttle Tracker to improve Patient & Visitor Experience, increase efficiency and capture lost revenue for your organization?

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