Article

Tennessee company offers RFID-based wayfinding

Identity Group's passive RFID-based wayfinding system is designed to integrate seamlessly with digital signage in a hospital.

June 24, 2010

• When a visitor enters a hospital at the front desk, the person at the front desk gives the visitor an identification badge which contains a small RFID antenna embedded into that badge. Optionally, the ID badge could be issued by a self-service kiosk or could be shipped by postal mail to the hospital visitor or outpatient prior to their hospital visit.
• Via the check-in process, the visitor communicates which clinic or office he or she plans to visit on the hospital campus. That information is then stored on the wayfinding system's database.
• As the visitor walks through the hospital, their badge is detected by a series of ceiling-mounted RFID antennas which face down towards the hospital corridors at a 45-degree angle. These ceiling-mounted antennas can detect a visitor walking through the halls when the visitor's ID badge passes within 5-8 meters of the antenna.
• At key decision points such as locations where two different hallways intersect, digital signs are mounted on the walls or on fixtures. As the visitor wearing the badge approaches the digital sign, the ceiling-mounted antenna detects the visitor and changes the text-and-arrow-based information on the digital portion of the wayfinding signage to point the visitor towards their destination.

The top half of this sign points hospital visitors to their destinations.

The beauty of Identity Group's wayfinding system – which was demonstrated at the recent SEGD conference -- is that its typefaces, enclosure materials and enclosure design colors integrate unobtrusively with the static signage. Also, after the visitor wearing the ID badge heeds the directions and moves on down the hospital corridor towards their destination, the digital sign which the visitor just passed erases those directions and prepares itself to provide the simple arrow-based directions to the next visitor as that person approaches the digital sign. During the intervals between the times that one visitor passes the digital sign and the next visitor approaches the digital sign, that sign automatically reverts to a "default" mode where it provides directions to common destinations such as admissions, cafeteria, and restrooms.

When the wayfinding system does not detect the presence of visitors, the digital signage reverts to a default mode.

Because the RFID-based digital wayfinding signage is configured in real time to assist individual hospital visitors, the system can communicate its text directions in a visitor's preferred language. The arrow symbols which accompany the text are, of course, understood by speakers of any language. Because demolition and construction is an ongoing fact of life at hospitals, the Identity Group system can revise its automatically generated directions so that it detours visitors away from the safety hazards that are found in and around construction sites.

Identity Group showed its new RFID-based digital signage wayfinding system for the first time at the recent Society for Information Display annual conference.

As RFID technology matures, the Identity Group system may be taken into other sectors such as hospitality and corporate campuses where a visitor typically carries an identifying card such as a badge or room key. Identity Group might also find hospitals that want to imbed the small passive RFID antennas on the armbands that hospital patients wear.