Wayfinding App Helps Visitors and Staff at University Health System Find Their Way

By Cheryl L. Serra

A person could get plenty lost in the maze of a ten-story, one-million-square-foot new building addition. But leaders at University Health System (UHS) in San Antonio, TX acted quickly to make sure that didn’t happen. They teamed with Etelu to develop a wayfinding application (app) that helps patients, visitors, and staff find their way around the new tower and the existing hospital. Development of other apps that will help with things like locating doctors and tracking surgery at UHS are on tap.

The app uses Cisco’s CMX platform to provide the blue dot technology—named because it puts a blue dot on a map to show where the user is in relation to where they want to go—to give users the directions they need to get where they’re going.

People who download the app to their mobile device can view floor maps, get explicit directions for navigating within the buildings and help find key offices and services such as labs, cafeterias and the gift shop.

Like the state of Texas itself, it seems that everything about UHS is bigger than many other healthcare facilities. It is the primary teaching partner of the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio. Its operating budget is $1.2 billion. It has nearly 6,000 team members (staff), a medical staff of 1,300 and 500 residents. Thousands of patients and visitors come to its campus each year. Tricia Aleman, UHS Executive Director of Marketing, said the idea of creating a UHS app began with the planned addition of the tower to the campus last spring. Realizing the huge structure would likely cause navigation challenges, top tech-savvy UHS administrators, including COO Mark Webb and members of the governing board of managers, proposed the app, envisioning that it would go live in time for the tower opening to ease some of the navigation issues. UHS administrators also wanted to create an end-user experience that was as impressive as the new building. They realize that frustrated and lost patients and missed appointments will derail that goal.

Anthony Sanchez, UHS Digital Marketing Manager, said that a little over a year ago, some 40 percent of the people who accessed UHS’s website did so from a mobile device; this number was up from 30 percent the year before. More recently, that number was more than 60 percent, indicating that more people are accessing the website from a mobile device than from a personal computer. They decided on a native app versus mobile Web to make it easier for users; they wouldn’t need to continually go to the UHS website to access the features. Instead they could download the app and have it on their mobile device. Many healthcare systems have native apps, he says, so it also gave UHS some bragging rights.

The major challenge for app development, Aleman says, was the tight deadline. The app needed to be developed and tested in three months. And it was.

The first task was to choose a developer. UHS sought competitive bids from two vendors and decided on Etelu, a mobile web and app development company that focuses on healthcare and education. Etelu was chosen because they had already completed similar projects for other healthcare facilities. They were also the best value in terms of price and ability to meet the UHS deadline, Aleman says.

Things moved quickly from there.

The project kickoff meeting was held in early December, 2013. Because the paperwork shuffle did not keep up with the speed of the project, Etelu began work without having a signed agreement in place. Etelu next provided a detailed wireframe, or a blueprint of the app and its functionality, for approval before beginning the actual work on the app. Once the wireframe was approved, Etelu provided a detailed list of project requirements, and Webb assigned the task to the appropriate people. Weekly meetings were held with all key project staff to review progress and discuss any questions that arose. By early March, the beta version of the app was ready. Key team members used the beta version and walked the UHS halls to make sure the navigation worked and to report instances when it didn’t so they could be fixed. They learned that some department locations had changed from what was originally planned, so map changes to the app were similarly made.

While this was occurring, the UHS marketing folks were putting together a plan to let everyone know about the new app’s availability and features. They talked about it in a newspaper insert heralding the tower’s grand opening. Information on the app was distributed at opening week events. They added a link on the UHS website, mailed out marketing pieces to community members, posted information on social media and displayed oversized banners throughout the hospital so they were easily seen by people exiting the elevators. In addition, the information desk handed out rack cards to people and QR codes were put on all collateral materials that were placed throughout the campus.

Rosemarie Francis, Etelu CEO, said a couple factors were key to the project’s success. To begin with, “We [Etelu] know exactly what it takes to get this done,” she says of the company’s experience in bringing such technology to market. They also kept the app simple, avoiding some of the bells and whistles they may have added if they’d had more time. This helped ensure it worked well out of the gate, since there was no time to waste on unnecessary fixes.

Aleman and Sanchez praise Etelu’s work on the project.

UHS had a three-month deadline and Francis and her team were able to meet it, to test the app and the go back and fix problems, Aleman says. She also says Francis kept project members on task and on time. There was no time to waste.

“We were still shuffling places around and looking at blueprints, and Rosemarie and her team were definitely a partner in this,” she adds.

In addition, Aleman says Webb was formerly the senior vice president over facilities administration, charged with building the tower. He was the executive sponsor, so to speak, of the app development project.

“He made sure the architects gave us the blueprints, and he worked with the IT people to make sure that all the different things in IT land were happening at the same time… Having him be a part of the team and making sure everyone was talking to one another was absolutely crucial,” Aleman says.

Sanchez served as the project manager, working daily with Webb, and Aleman participated, as well.

A presentation on the app development was part of the 18th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference produced by Greystone.net held last November in Scottsdale, AZ. Presenters Francis and Aleman listed many benefits of the app, including decreased confusion and reduced stress experienced by people trying to locate places in the hospital, employees’ enjoyment of working for an organization that uses best-in-class technology, and the use of technology that will help provide analytic data. From a business perspective, more patients can get to their appointments on time, allowing physicians and staff to see more patients and use their time and resources more effectively. Also, if people can more easily find the gift shop, for instance, they can spend more money in it.

A planned future development survey will be distributed at a later date and is aimed at gauging the effectiveness of the app and suggest revisions if necessary.

UHS plans to roll the app out to all of its 21 locations, such as clinics and dialysis centers. Because they have only one hospital in the system, and because it’s so big, they rolled the app out there first.

UHS currently doesn’t have the capacity to bring this very long app to-do list in-house, but they may someday investigate that possibility. Aleman says IT currently has other higher priorities, so UHS will continue to work with Etelu, who is affordable and has demonstrated the ability to deliver.

When asked about the timeline for future app development and how long the UHS is in this for, Aleman talks about their new paradigm, an ongoing process seemingly without end as more apps are developed and all apps are continually updated and revised.

“This is a part of what we do now. We plan to have one app for all of our needs. For instance, we have a patient portal [currently on the Web]. Our patient portal will be added to the app. So you go to one app for everything University Health System.”

Cheryl L. Serra is an award-winning freelance writer and marketing communications specialist. She may be reached at cherylserra@yahoo.com.