You'll never get lost in these 3 venues

Gone are the days of guessing whether you're on the right floor, or in the right wing of a building. Location intelligence has stepped indoors – right this way.

It's clear the location intelligence industry continues to add immeasurable value to people's lives and to businesses' bottom lines.  To understand this growth, we need only take a look at the way it's being used today. Far from just producing a route from point A to destination B, location technology has evolved. And one of the ways it's evolved is by heading indoors and enriching the offline experience of moving through a building. Here are three places that are pioneering this new wave of indoor location intelligence.

Sharp Chula Vista Medical Centre

If you've ever found yourself sitting in a hospital emergency room, you'll know first-hand that hospitals are constantly overrun, and under-staffed. Due to no fault of the hardworking staff, there are simply too few medical professionals compared to the constant demand for their help. One of the most valuable ways location intelligence is used therefore, is within hospitals, to track the flow of patients in and out, as well as the points along the system that lose time or cause delays.

California's Sharp Chula Vista Medical Centre is one hospital that's working to improve this. Using a real-time location system patient-tracking program, patients wear a wristband with a numbered barcode. Once patients are scanned, the hospital is able to speed up bed turnover, and care for more patients in less time. Once a patient is discharged, an automatic notification goes to housekeeping staff, who immediately prepare the room/bed for the next patient – saving an average of three hours from this process.

Amazon Go

As you might expect from Amazon, their Amazon Go store was among the first of its kind. What these stores lack in their modest sizes (generally less than 3,000 square feet), they make up for in their truly 'walk in, walk out' factor. In fact, Amazon uses what they call 'just walk out technology', combining computer vision, deep learning algorithms and sensor fusion, wrapped up with indoor location tracking. All of that amounts to technology similar to that of self-driving cars. Shoppers scan their phones when they walk in, put their phone away, then simply put their chosen items directly into their bags, pockets or mouths. Once you leave, your Amazon account totals your items, charges your Amazon account, and sends you the receipt.

The shopping experience is so sleek, watching their promo video looks like a series of people cheerfully and openly stealing goods from the shelves. 

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

As this airport prepared to launch its wayfinding API last year, it signalled a change (finally!) to the stress inherent in air travel.

The newly integrated official Amsterdam Schiphol Airport app does more than let you check-in remotely and find out what stores you can shop at. It can intelligently and intuitively map your entire journey, from your front door to your boarding gate. Partnering with us at HERE Technologies, the app uses location data and maps to produce accurate and dynamic routing information.

The indoor revolution

This sample of venues is just that - a small glimpse into the use of indoor location technology that's spreading across the globe. Hospitals, stadiums, universities – every building that can be improved by indoor navigation could potentially be transformed. 

Discovering the technology powering this revolution has never been easier - step this way and explore HERE's Indoor Positioning.