AdventHealth x SCADpro
Designing a connected hospital experience around the people who make care possible.
Heartbeat is a smart-hospital ecosystem created with AdventHealth × SCADpro to help patients and healthcare teams more easily find people, equipment, and critical information across the hospital. The system connects physical and digital touchpoints through RFID-enabled technology, supporting clearer navigation, stronger coordination, and more connected care.
My Role
I led a sensory-cue research activity, co-designed Heartbeat’s service blueprint, and designed Loop, a room-level digital touchpoint—from its feature definition and interface design through an interactive prototype.
The Outcome
Selected
From flexible work to sustainable support.
Loop
7/7 positive response from early reviewers.
In Development
Heartbeat is informing future smart-hospitals.
The Problem
In a hospital, finding something shouldn't get in the way of caring for someone.
Hospitals depend on constant coordination between people, equipment, information, and spaces. But across the research, patients and staff described difficulty navigating the environment, locating resources, and staying connected across fragmented systems.
For care teams, that meant time spent calling, walking between departments, or searching for equipment and colleagues. For patients and visitors, unclear layouts and inconsistent wayfinding added confusion to an already stressful experience.
The challenge was not simply to add more technology. It was to understand how technology could better connect people, things, and information across the hospital without creating more friction.
47%
experience difficulty navigating hospital environments.
32min
per week spent by hospital staff helping others find their way.
1/3
of nurses’ time is actually spent on direct patient care.
The Research
We studied the hospital experience, then looked deeper at how it made people feel.
Our team combined surveys, interviews, cultural probes, and field observation to understand the hospital experience from multiple perspectives. Together, these methods surfaced both the operational challenges affecting patients and care teams and the emotional realities that traditional workflow research can miss.
108
survey responses
14
in-depth interviews
34
cultural probe participants
1
day of field observation
My Research Focus · Cultural Probe
I led the development and field execution of our cultural probe, from designing the prompts, images, and word associations to coordinating outreach and facilitating participants in the park.
Designed for expression
I created the prompts, images, and word associations participants used to express how hospital environments made them feel and how they wished to feel. The open-ended format surfaced emotions and needs that could be difficult to articulate through interviews alone.
Led in the field
I coordinated the activity and led outreach in the park, recruiting community members and guiding participants through the probe. The findings brought a more emotional, human perspective into our understanding of the hospital experience.
Design Decisions
The solution needed to connect the hospital, not add another tool.
Research revealed that navigation, communication, equipment access, and patient information were not isolated problems. These principles helped us shape Heartbeat as one connected ecosystem rather than another standalone hospital technology.
Connect, don’t add
Technology should reduce fragmentation, not create another system to manage.
Make information visible
People, equipment, and patient information should be easy to find when needed.
Return time to care
Reduce coordination and searching so care teams can spend more time with patients.
Keep care human
Efficiency should support clarity, reassurance, not replace human care.
The Solution
Heartbeat connects people, equipment, information, and care across one hospital ecosystem.
Heartbeat is an RFID-powered smart-hospital system designed to connect staff, equipment, patient information, and physical spaces through a network of coordinated touchpoints. Rather than solving each challenge separately, the system brings them together through a shared layer of real-time information and location awareness.
Smart Heart
An RFID-enabled staff badge that helps care teams locate one another in real time, improving coordination while reducing time spent searching for colleagues.
Portal
An in-room patient interface that brings schedules, care progress, reminders, and messages from loved ones into one accessible and reassuring experience.
Connect
A mobile platform that helps staff locate colleagues and equipment, coordinate tasks, and access the information they need while moving throughout the hospital.
Hub
A centralized dashboard that gives hospital teams real-time visibility into staff and critical equipment, supporting faster coordination and more informed decisions.
My Design Focus
Designing Loop around the moments before care begins.
I designed Loop, a room-level digital touchpoint that uses RFID to surface relevant patient information as authorized staff approach.
My work included defining Loop’s features, organizing its information architecture, designing the interface, and developing the interactive prototype.
Recognize who's approaching
RFID recognition gives authorized staff quick access to patient information as they approach the room.
Make critical information glanceable
Vitals, medications, care details, and updates are prioritized for quick orientation before entering.
Keep the person visible
Patient photos, personal details, and care-team profiles help keep the human behind the record visible.
Support quick connection
Video check-ins allow care teams to communicate with patients directly from outside the room.
The Blueprint
Connecting the touchpoints into one care system.
I co-designed Heartbeat’s service blueprint to understand how the system’s people, touchpoints, technology, and operations needed to work together across the hospital experience. This helped us move beyond five individual concepts and map Heartbeat as one coordinated service.
Validation
Bringing the Heartbeat ecosystem to life through immersive testing.
We used user testing, client feedback, and an immersive VR simulation to evaluate how Heartbeat could function within a real hospital environment. Rather than presenting the ecosystem through interfaces alone, the VR experience allowed stakeholders to encounter the system in context and understand how its touchpoints could work together.
Feedback throughout the process helped us refine the concepts, interactions, and overall experience before presenting the final system to AdventHealth.
Reflection
Designing my way through a system I was still learning.
I entered this project unfamiliar with the U.S. hospital system, but confident in my ability to ask questions, observe, and learn. Through field research, service mapping, and prototyping,
I gained a deeper understanding of how design can reduce friction and support human connection across complex healthcare experiences.
Up Next
What if public services were designed beyond the limits of demographics and personas?
Discover how I contributed to a research framework for public-service teams to translate human complexity into actionable insights.
