Finding Your Way at GBMC

GBMC employees and volunteers have become quite accustomed to finding people who are lost on our campus. Almost every day, I find someone who needs help to get to their destination. Our campus is big, and our buildings are spread out over a large area. Before I arrived at GBMC, the decision was made to name our parking structures after flowers to make it easier for people to remember where they parked. Unfortunately, many people don’t remember their flower. 

When coming for an appointment, patients are often anxious, which makes it more likely that they will lose their way and struggle with signage and on-wall maps. Patients arrive late and sometimes actually miss their appointments, and we staff members often arrive late to a meeting because we are helping people find their way. So, we have been looking to improve wayfinding at GBMC. 

Last fall, GBMC began partnering with an industry-leading mobile application vendor, Phunware, to provide our patients with a blue-dot wayfinding solution to help them navigate to and within our main campus. The app is available for both Android and iPhones for download, free of charge, at the Google PlayStore and the Apple AppStore.

Using the app, patients and family members can get directions from their homes to the closest parking garage to their destination as well as step-by-step directions to their appointment. In addition, our GBMC app gives patients and visitors an opportunity to read GBMC news or connect to social media. Visitors can also input vital information, such as their visitor details, before entering the hospital. 

The addition of the GBMC wayfinding app is another example of our work to use technology to make it easier to access care from us. The app will connect to the patient’s medical record via the Epic MyChart portal which allows our patients to access their appointments, medical information, etc. from their phone. 

Since the launch in November, more than 500 people a month are actively using the GBMC wayfinding app. We continue to work with Phunware to add new features. Share My Location is a feature that will be available soon and will allow patients to share their location with friends/family who would then use the app-provided route to arrive at the location.

We are excited to improve wayfinding on our campus using this app. Have you tried it yet? If not, please visit here to get started.