Baylor Scott & White: Community-Centered Hospital Wayfinding

Situated in the heart of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Baylor Scott & White Medical Center wanted modern hospital wayfinding to help patients and visitors navigate their sprawling complex. This premier medical facility for the area is not-for-profit and full service, offering advanced medical treatments of all kinds. To fully serve their community, it was important that the wayfinding be available in Spanish as well as English, and offer a variety of options for visitors of all ages and abilities.

A clean touchscreen design from the award-winning Visix Creative Services team offers a campus map to orient visitors to the area and maps for all eight floors of the medical center. Color-coding quickly denotes room types (e.g., departments in light blue, medical offices in yellow, the ER in red), and there’s a simple legend with icons for common destinations, such as restrooms, vending machines, elevators, ATMs and so on.

Two directories let people find a specific location if they already know what they need. When browsing departments, each entry shows the department name, building, floor and room number. This list also includes non-medical destinations, such as ATMs, and can be filtered by alphabetical keys. The patient rooms directory shows groups of rooms by department, building and which tower they’re in. There are also up, down and “find” buttons below the directories for an ADA-compliant navigation option.

Both directories include quick “find it” links next to each listing to launch an animated route map to the desired location, along with turn-by-turn directions in text. The path stays onscreen until navigated away from, which gives visitors ample time to figure out where they need to go.

Visitors have several options to take directions with them when they step away from the screen. They can have the text directions they’ve searched for sent to a smartphone. Clients simply enter their telephone number, and the system sends them an SMS text message, so they can take it on the go, referencing it as often as they need to. Or people can opt to print the directions right there at a printer near the hospital wayfinding display. This appeals to older visitors and people with pay-per-text phone plans, and comes in handy if someone’s phone has low battery power.

There’s another option on the touchscreen that prompts people to enter a phone number to send the entire hospital wayfinding project to their mobile, making navigation throughout the buildings and campus even more convenient. As mentioned before, all the options and information are also available in Spanish, the second most spoken language in the area.

The hospital digital signs are placed in portrait orientation, with all interactive buttons in a row along the bottom. This not only leaves more room for the maps to be displayed (so they can be larger) but is ADA compliant for people in wheelchairs to have easy access. And, of course, sending the entire project to a smartphone also increases engagement and improves the visitor experience for everyone.

Baylor Scott & White is justifiably proud of their newly renovated and expanded facility, including a new patient tower. As Cindy Schamp, president of Baylor Scott & White – Irving, said, they’re “taking high tech to new heights.” With digital innovation, patient experience and community engagement at the forefront, it’s a truly modern healthcare destination.