Substantive navigation systems in medical institutions: a lean perspective

Background. Navigation is an essential component of visualisation systems and the quality of space in the concept of a lean healthcare organisation. The major goal of a navigation system is to ensure comfort of the patient by optimising his quick orientation and self-routing through the building or the surrounding area of medical facilities. An effective navigation in terms of informative visualisation solutions provides a clear and understandable navigation content at a right time, place and to a necessary extent along the entire route of the visitor.Objectives. Assessment of the extent, structure and quality of information conveyed by a healthcare institution’s navigation system from a lean production perspective.Methods. The assay included 73 primary medical institutions from 11 subjects of the Russian Federation to scrutinise all internal and external navigational elements available on-site.Results. The navigation systems’ content well satisfied the lean principles across all studied medical organisations, with no statistically significant differences country-wide. A routine correction of navigation systems is currently not realised by the absolute majority of organisations (84%, 61/73). The absence of informational noise was the highest-scoring criterion with various navigation panels (60%, 44/73), and facility detailing — the lowest-scoring one (44%, 32/73).Conclusion. A substantive content is a full competent of navigation systems and should be considered in legal guidelines for improving their design code and brand books at the regional and federal levels. Improvement of navigation systems by content will significantly reduce the main and additional wastes of lean manufacturing incurred by both the patient and medical personnel. Medical organisations with active navigation systems require effective measures for their regular monitoring and content evaluation with control for errors, obsolete or irrelevant data.