Nearly everyone these days is walking around with a hyperconnected supercomputer on their person—a hyperconnected supercomputer that is able to determine its own location on this great green earth. This is a powerful capability, driving key applications that help people navigate unfamiliar areas, find friends, and, of course, order junk food late at night.
GPS deservedly gets much of the credit here. It’s one of those modern marvels that’s too easily taken for granted. The constellation of 30 or so satellites moving through orbit gives all kinds of devices the information they need to locate themselves. One drawback to this space-tech, however, is that it’s in space. Without a clear line of sight to the sky, GPS accuracy tanks quickly.
This makes location awareness inside large, complex facilities a tough nut to crack—or at least a nut requiring a different cracking technique. But before we dive too deep into the nerdy details, we’d best reflect on the why, and whether this endeavor is worthy of our collective time.
The Why
As with GPS, a successful IPS (Indoor Positioning System) implementation gives additional context to users of an application. It also gives context about users of an application and, of course, context to the application itself. It creates a mapping between the physical and the digital, creating some unique opportunities for interaction between the two. These are all great capabilities to have, and can unlock some interesting potentials. Potentials such as these:
Indoor location awareness is still pretty fresh, with a few solutions able to function with great reliability and efficiency at scale. It’s one of those foundational systems where it can be truly exciting to see what sort of creative solutions will be built on the core of a robust new technology. Or, if not new, a technology that’s finally finding its footing.
Tune in next time for a deeper dive into common techniques used to determine indoor position and some of the technology which powers it.
The original version of this page was published at: https://www.goziohealth.com/blog/what-is-the-value-of-location-awareness-and-hospital-wayfinding
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