Building smart hospitals without rebuilding hospitals
For many healthcare organisations, the ambition of becoming a smart hospital has traditionally been associated with major capital investment, lengthy implementation programmes, and extensive infrastructure projects. The prospect of installing thousands of sensors, laying new cabling and disrupting busy clinical environments has often made operational transformation feel complex, costly, and difficult to justify.
Yet hospitals do not need to rebuild their physical infrastructure to become smarter. Developed from award-winning University of Oxford research, Navenio’s indoor positioning technology makes it possible to achieve real-time visibility of people, assets, and workflows without the hardware overhead traditionally associated with Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS).
Conventional RTLS deployments typically rely on dedicated infrastructure installed throughout a hospital, requiring extensive planning, installation, and ongoing maintenance. While these systems can provide valuable location data, the time, cost, and operational disruption involved in deploying them can become a significant barrier to adoption, particularly when balancing financial pressures with the need to improve patient care.
Navenio takes a different approach. By using AI and the sensors already available in smartphones, the platform delivers room-level indoor positioning without requiring fixed anchors, Bluetooth beacons, or proprietary infrastructure. Because the technology works with devices staff already carry, hospitals can deploy the platform quickly while avoiding the disruption associated with traditional infrastructure projects.
The value extends beyond knowing where people or equipment are located. Real-time location intelligence enables hospitals to optimise workflows, automate routine tasks, improve patient flow, and make better use of existing resources. Staff can spend less time searching for equipment, porters can be assigned more efficiently, cleaning tasks can be triggered automatically, and hospital management teams gain a live operational picture of how people, assets, and workflows are moving throughout the organisation.
This software-led approach has already demonstrated measurable benefits across the NHS. In NHSx AI Award-supported trials, Navenio released the equivalent of 27 full-time employees back to clinical care by removing logistical friction from everyday hospital operations. At Cumberland Infirmary, bed turnaround times were reduced by 50%, while porter response times and cleaner response times have continued to improve since deployment.
As hospitals continue their digital transformation, the conversation is increasingly shifting from simply collecting more data to making operational improvements that can be delivered quickly and sustainably. Rather than waiting for major infrastructure programmes to complete, healthcare organisations are looking for technologies that fit around existing clinical environments and deliver value from the outset.
A smart hospital should be defined by how intelligently it operates, and not by how much hardware it has installed. By combining software based indoor positioning with workflow automation, Navenio helps hospitals become smarter without rebuilding the hospital itself.
