How to Improve the Healthcare Experience by Utilizing Beacons
Beacon is rapidly growing technology into almost every industry, including health care. Beacons integrate with the right mobile apps provide hospitals an excellent opportunity to improve the user experience with more effective processes and increased patient care. Several businesses across various industries have already initiated to take benefit of beacons and their respective apps to modify their wireless networks into connected, contextually-aware mobile environments.
BLE beacons offer a unique opportunity for hospitals to improve both the visitor as well as patient experience, whereas it also improving hospital operations and patient care. IoT will transform the way health services are provided. The Beacon and IoT can be used to keep a record of equipment, log and analyze staff activities within hospitals. This can minimize the no of hours used up by staff for placing equipment and allow them to spend more time for patients. A review implies that near about 60% of healthcare institutes have launched IoT enabled devices in their facilities.
With the help of digital way finding kiosks, mobile devices and digital indoor maps, BLE beacons can allow hospitals to enhance location and proximity awareness, generating a more familiar and effective environment for patients as well as for visitors.
Beacon technology in healthcare
The patient experience is an important aspect of any health care success. From network security, guest access to Wi-Fi performance and its feasibility, securing patient-data, Wi-Fi networks have always been challenging tasks for hospital Information officers in different ways. With the help of location-aware beacons and apps, it is possible to provide patients the right registration information ron their own mobile device as soon as they come into a registration area.
This gives real-time analysis of the patients, no matter where they reside. Thus patients can minimize the expensive hospital stays as well as travel. To help you interpret the potential of this new technology, we’ve outline together with some examples of how you could leverage beacon technology inside the health care environment.
Indoor Navigation Systems with Experiential Wayfinding
Using an integration of wireless and BLE Beacon technology, patients and visitors can be provided with exact turn-by-turn directions to wherever they want to go by utilizing their earlier installed hospital app. This location-aware technology offers users with more accurate indoor navigation by transmitting location information that can be utilized in combination with a mobile app.
The capability of hospitals to offer patients with an interactive indoor map significantly boosts the patient experience, cuts down on staff interference and supports the hospital to acquire insights into patient and visitor flow via facility. With the help of an app, you can identify the appointment and navigate the patient to the respective doctor’s assembly.
Mobile Patient Check-In
Apart from the navigational system, BLE beacons have the capability to help and improve automated patient check-in. Patients who have a hospital’s mobile app, when start-up by a beacon a signal activates an event in the patient flow management system which is then added to the registration queue and provides evaluated wait times. Once registered, the app instigates the patient to go along with indoor directions depends on beacon signals up to their appointment location.
This eliminates friction from one of the most difficult administration times at hospitals and supports to eliminate excess from busy waiting rooms, extracting the human margin for error on patients that are left unprocessed. The longer wait time negatively affects the patient satisfaction score hence it is essential for healthcare to discover smarter ways to minimize the wait time. Setting up a beacon architecture wherein patients and visitors can initiate filling out the necessary information from their personal devices, is very helpful. When a patient gets into the hospital, he/she can immediately send their documents to the respective doctor which is required for diagnosis. This information can be utilized to prioritize patient flow.
Fetch Proximity
Proximity-based notifications are one of the main advantages of BLE beacon technology. Patients can get tips and advice in the form of beacons push notification. Due to their range, the beacons have the capability to activate a message when a patient enters within a specific area. Let’s take an example; an indoor mapping solution with beacons could automatically trigger retrieval of patient records when a doctor’s device comes into proximity of a certain patient’s bed. Beacons can also be utilized to release a warning when senior patients or children are too close to a harmful area or sensitive equipment, notifying staff that their presence is needed at a certain location.
Improve Hospital Efficiency with Facility Management
Hospital assets are costly and keeping a record of all such equipment can be a challenging task. The healthcare staff frequently works in different places and has different responsibilities. As a result of this costly healthcare, equipment is usually lost or left in disuse.
By applying an asset tracking system with beacons, you will able to know where your equipment is. This assures that there are fewer misplaced assets, minimized purchase of the same equipment and shorter wait time for patients. Location, as well as proximity-based technology, integrates with wireless hospital asset management to provide better tracking of hospital equipment and resources.
Any part of equipment can be tagged, tracked and easily located. By implementing beacon and IoT Infrastructure in healthcare, staff will be capable to know where the equipment is exactly positioned and minimize the cost of replacing lost equipment which will save patients’ lives. Beacons can not only track assets but also collect a huge amount of customer data that support in understanding patient behavior.
Inform Treating Physician About the Patient’s Medical History
Beacons can automatically generate an alert to treating the physician about the potential concerns and medical histories, likewise medical conditions, allergies or sensitivity to specific medicines, blood group and other information.
This technology is used to prevent the current COVID-19 outbreak where the treating physicians will easily come to know about the medical history of the patient which will easy to save patients’ life on the early stage with the proper treatment. With the help of this technology, the hospital ward patients can be simply matched with their previous reports and current records to improve the facility and avoid any human error. In this way, each and every patient can get proper care from the doctor.
It improves hospital productivity and point-of-care proficiency while reducing operational costs. The beacon technology has thus revolved out to be an effective tool that is used in enterprise operations greatly and every year new advantages and uses are recognized for the patients and healthcare professionals.