How to prepare location data for indoor navigation

Every hospital already has location data — it just usually lives in several incompatible places: an estates CAD file, a switchboard spreadsheet, a signage schedule from three refurbishments ago, and the knowledge in a few very experienced porters' heads. The first job of any mapping project is not drawing a map; it is reconciling these sources into one destination list that is actually current.

A useful destination record needs more than a name and a room number. It needs the entrance it is reachable from, the floor and route type (step-free or not), any temporary closure status, and who is responsible for keeping that record accurate. Without an owner, the data decays the moment the project team moves on.

We recommend starting with a single priority pathway rather than the whole estate. Pick one outpatient service, map every destination a patient on that pathway might need — including toilets, seating and the accessible entrance — and validate it by walking the route with someone unfamiliar with the building. Problems surface immediately that a desk review never finds.

Only once that pathway is solid does it make sense to scale the same discipline across further departments and buildings. Rushing straight to a whole-estate map with unreliable source data produces a confident-looking product that quietly sends people the wrong way.