WAYFINDING AND INTELLIGENT FACILITIES IN HOSPITALS

Abstract

The concept of Intelligent buildings is mainly focused on commercial, retail or residential buildings in today’s context and intelligent facilities are very much associated in meeting user’s needs in the business aspects. However, information technology (IT) and smart systems could also have major contribution to healthcare facilities. Hospital is inherently complex as a multi-building ensemble with multiple levels. Way-finding could be a tedious and effortful task in a hospital despite with the aid of signage and directories. Hence, this dissertation aims to investigate the need to implement IT systems in hospital buildings to help improve the way-finding and registration system. Through the observations made during the field studies to the seven public hospitals, it was found that only a few hospitals adopt the self-registration system using kiosk. Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) is the only hospital which has implemented the visitor self-registration kiosk and the gantry system for visitor management while Changi General Hospital adopted a 3D way-finding information kiosk. Each hospital was observed to have different degree of difficulty in way-finding. Surveys were then carried out with patients and visitors from each hospital and it was found that the proportion of respondents who experience difficulty in way-finding is statistically significant. Thus, the incorporation of an intelligent way-finding system into the existing self-registration kiosk is proposed to aid in way-finding. Opinions on this proposal were sought from patients and visitors and found that majority of them were in favour of this idea. Interview was also conducted with the IT and Operation Manager of TTSH to understand professional perspective on the feasibility of this intelligent system, at the same time uncovering many benefits of the self-registration system.