Location-Based Patient Experiences
Bluetooth-beacon-driven patient experiences across hundreds of healthcare facilities. We surface the right care task at the right time and place.
500+
Facilities deployed
Bluetooth-beacon infrastructure across the network's clinical sites
3M+
Patients reached
Across the network's national patient population
2
Platforms shipped
iOS and Android, a unified patient experience on both
Executive Summary
The Challenge: Patients arriving at a facility had no idea where to go or what care tasks they could complete while on-site. Staff had no way of knowing a patient had arrived until they physically checked in at a desk. Care opportunities like a prescription waiting to be picked up, a vaccination overdue, or a lab result to discuss slipped past silently.
The Solution: Bluetooth beacons deployed across hundreds of facilities, paired with a cross-platform app that detects patient arrivals and surfaces contextual experiences: prescription pickup alerts, vaccination reminders, wayfinding, and a "get more done" task list scoped to whatever's relevant for that patient at that facility today.
The Results: A patient experience that knows where the patient is and surfaces what matters in the moment, across iOS and Android, across hundreds of facilities.
Interactive Prototype
See how patient arrivals work
A working prototype of the patient arrival flow, from automatic check-in to contextual task surfacing.
Mobile prototype
Patient Experience App
Best experienced on a larger screen, or open in a new tab to view at full size.
View prototypeAbout the Client
National Healthcare Network
A national healthcare network operating hundreds of medical facilities and serving millions of patients across the country. Their patient population spans every demographic and care need, and their facilities range from large hospitals to neighborhood clinics, each with its own physical layout and operational rhythm.
The Challenge
Healthcare facilities are dense, complicated places. A patient arriving for a 9am appointment might also be eligible for a flu shot, due for a lab result review, and have a prescription waiting at the pharmacy on the second floor. But none of that surfaces unless the patient already knows to ask, and most don't.
Meanwhile, the facility itself has no idea the patient is on the premises until they reach a check-in desk. By then, the moment to redirect them to the lab, the pharmacy, or a free vaccination clinic has often passed. Care opportunities that the system invested significant effort to surface in advance simply evaporated at the threshold.
The network needed a way to recognize patient arrivals at the building level and act on that recognition immediately, across hundreds of facilities, every device the patient might be holding, and every care opportunity their record suggested was relevant.
Our Approach
We designed and deployed a Bluetooth-beacon infrastructure across the network's facilities: a physical sensor layer that the patient-facing app can detect. When a patient arrives at a facility, their phone passively recognizes the beacon and the app shifts into "on-site" mode, surfacing the tasks, alerts, and wayfinding most relevant to that patient at that location at that moment.
The app ships on iOS and Android as first-class clients, sharing the same beacon detection logic and content surface, so a patient's experience is consistent on whichever device they happen to have in hand. The "get more done" task surface is the centerpiece: a contextual list of opportunities the patient can act on while they're already standing in the building. Pick up a prescription. Get a flu shot. Check in for the appointment they came for.
Hardware deployment at this scale is its own discipline. We worked with the network's facilities, IT, and operations teams to plan beacon placement, validate signal coverage, and create the operational playbook that lets each site own its own deployment going forward.
Outcomes
A patient experience that recognizes where the patient is and surfaces the most relevant care opportunity in the moment, turning building-level arrivals into care actions.
Context-aware patient app
Beacon-driven detection means app behavior shifts the moment a patient enters a facility, surfacing what matters here, now.
Two platforms, one experience
iOS and Android share the same detection logic and content surface, so the patient gets the same experience on whichever device they're holding.
Hardware + software as one system
Beacon placement, signal coverage, and app behavior were designed together so the in-facility experience is reliable at the building level.
Care opportunities surfaced in the moment
Prescription pickups, vaccinations, lab follow-ups: all the "while you're here" actions the system used to miss are now visible to the patient when they can act.
Looking Ahead
What's Next
With the beacon infrastructure live across the network, the platform is positioned to layer in additional contextual experiences like dynamic wayfinding, appointment-aware triage, and integration with point-of-care systems, all without re-deploying hardware.
Key Takeaway
Healthcare technology often optimizes for what happens during the appointment. The bigger opportunity is the threshold: recognizing the patient at the door and acting on every care opportunity that's relevant before they ever sit down in the exam room.
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