A mobile application for indoor real-time positioning and navigation in healthcare
What is it about?
This paper presents an Indoor Positioning System implemented as a mobile application that can guide patients and visitors throughout a healthcare premise. The developed application features two different working modes for on-site and off-site navigation, which offer both the possibility of actual navigation within the hospital, or planning a route from a list of available starting points to the desired target, without being within the navigable area.
Why is it important?
Navigation portable applications have largely grown during the last years. However, the majority of them works just for outdoor positioning and routing, due to their architecture based upon Global Positioning System signals. The proposed application aims to overcome the aforementioned limitations by using magnetic fingerprinting in combination with sensor fusion, providing an Indoor Positioning System mobile application, specifically designed for healthcare facilities. This prevents to rely on a single technology, reducing possible system failures and increasing the scalability.