Unlocking the Potential of Smart Parking Technologies to Improve Patient Experience
By: Iwona Skowronek
Tags: Smart Parking, Digital Transformation, Smart Hospitals, Smart Cities, AI

The overall hospital experience of patients and their families has many components — from the attitude of healthcare staff and technical quality of medical equipment to backstage elements like the efficiency of processes, communication, and some seemingly minor aspects that happen before and after the visit– the parking experience. A parking facility is one of the neglected elements that can impact the overall satisfaction of patients and visitors. So what defines a modern, innovative parking facility, and what does “smartness” stand for regarding structures like a concrete-made facility? And why do innovation-oriented medical centers need to embrace digitalization also with respect to their parking infrastructure?

The level of “intelligence” of a parking lot can be defined by its digitalization. This involves adopting software-based solutions that allow greater efficiency and more overall sustainability through the reduction of time spent circling the lot and making use of empty spots.

Is hospital parking aligned with tech-equipped hospital buildings?

When it comes to the adoption of software and cloud-based services by hospitals, digital investments in healthcare are already broadly adopted as they help increase organizational performance, productivity and add value to medical services. Clinics deploy systems supporting workflow management, such as EHR (electronic health record) documentation organization. Artificial intelligence, automation, and smart technologies are becoming widely used in preventive medicine, helping improve the accuracy of treatment and clinical decisions, in medical imaging (computer tomography), telehealth visits, etc.

At the same time, patients often interact with a healthcare facility through a digital platform like online booking. As much as 85% of general medical doctors use email in communication with patients and 64% of general doctors use WhatsApp. 11% of patients use online booking and 7% pay online. 41% of citizens use smart devices like smartwatches and other wearables to monitor their health[1].

While healthcare facilities embrace digital technologies, many hospital parking facilities today are hardly aligned with frontier technologies adopted inside medical buildings. The COVID-19 pandemic may level up the digital transformation that is happening inside hospitals versus the uptake of digital solutions on hospital parking facilities, so they do not lag behind tech adoption inside the hospital facility itself. During the coronavirus crisis, many organizations shifted their strategies towards resource optimization. Buildings with a strong tech infrastructure fared far better in the pandemic than buildings without[2]. This emphasizes the role of intelligent technologies also when it comes to parking resources management.

A flexible operating model enables reacting swiftly to changing circumstances (Scheme 1), such as fluctuating parking demand. We are witnessing how the facility management industry, now impacted by the pandemic, is re-imaging to adapt to this new normalcy — in terms of a hybrid-type of work (partly from home, partly from the office), changed mobility patterns and expectations regarding hygienic measures. All of these can be supported by solutions involving parking digitalization, which means adding agility to parking management and higher health safety with technology and eliminating human support on-site.

Scheme 1:

Higher automation — lower transmission risk

Hospitals are crucial when it comes to the adoption of preventive measures against COVID19. Inside, medical centres implement special procedures and high levels of disinfection, but in the parking facility, the place which often is the very first touchpoint of the patient with the hospital, remains forgotten. Pressing buttons to print paper tickets or touching screens on the payment machines pose risks of coming in contact with the virus. It’s also inconvenient and time-consuming. These burdens could be eliminated by:

- introduction of parking time registration via automatic plate number recognition,

- creation of a digital parking ticket in a mobile application,

- ability to pay from a smartphone,

- or automatic parking payment execution while the car is leaving the parking lot. In this case, the ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) camera system recognises the car and payment for parking is automatically deducted from a credit card linked with the user’s account in the smart parking application.

ANPR is a technology that reads vehicle registration plates as they approach and checks them against the database, to which visitor number plate credentials can be continuously added or removed.

Using modern technologies to park offers convenience, but it also allows visitors to avoid the potential risk of touching parking infrastructure and surfaces that may expose them to a virus. During COVID19, traffic on the Good Doctor platform, which provides online medical services, increased more than eight times; people didn’t want to go to hospitals[3]. The consumer mindset has changed as they no longer feel the need to go to the hospital for a minor illness. But if they go, they want to be certain about health security. In this respect, touchless smart parking processes serve as solutions safeguarding healthcare centre visitors.

Hospital experience impacted by parking procedures

Drawbacks with regards to outdated parking infrastructure, difficulties with parking and processes requiring manual interventions can be projected on the health centre’s assessment by patients and their families. Digital solutions and app-based parking control can help in the prevention of missed appointments and reduction of no-show rates caused by issues with parking.

When booking a hospital visit, customers can be notified by email about providing a plate number, based on which access to a parking lot can be automatically granted. Providing license plate data allows for automatic entry and exit, making the process free-flow and faster. Automation of parking simplifies permit validation, supports managing parking spots capacity and changing fees, as well as improves safety and parking enforcement by reducing human errors.

Facilitating a smoother arrival experience, flexible payments options and reduction of exiting time can ease frustrations that may occur with regards to parking, and as a result, impact the overall hospital image. Smart parking applications available on smartphones give patient’s relatives the possibility to extend parking time during a visit and not rush if their parking ticket has been prepaid for a specific amount of time. When it comes to smart buildings and property technology in general, customer satisfaction is measured in terms of frictionless service and responsiveness[4].

Rethinking hospital parking

According to Global Mass Transit[5] data, the number of paper tickets (in mobility) will continue to diminish, and the same should happen for the parking industry and paper parking tickets that are so familiar to users. Revised by the European Union, the Payment Services Directive (PSD2) promotes innovative mobile and internet payment services and recently allowed a parking ticket to be considered a digital good, one that could be displayed on a smart device like a smartphone and paid digitally via mobile. This sheds light on app-based payments for parking and has some important implications for businesses. The PSD2 legislation means that facility owners can implement parking management systems, not requiring traditional parking (paper) ticket dispensers nor cash machines. Although an adoption of ticketless parking by facility owners should be followed by user acceptance and usage of mobile phones and smart parking apps to enter, pay and exit parking lots in a “digital way”.

A behavioural shift starts with a mental shift. And although the adoption of mobile apps increased by 40% during the pandemic, breaking the habits of the masses and changing the custom of taking a paper ticket when entering a parking lot may take a while. Usually, the problem does not lie in delivering technology to a project but in the assimilation of customers to new ways of interactions (in this case — interaction with parking). If the parking reservation system on behalf of hospital visitors is linked with a doctor appointment, the hospital staff using it must be comfortable with this solution. Thus, doctors and administration must understand how using technology will help them do their jobs better, while enhancing visitor satisfaction.

The future of (hospital) parking is digital

To enable digital transformation, stakeholders must change the way parking operations are performed — from drivers using smart parking apps, through parking facility owners deploying intelligent parking solutions, to municipalities harnessing digital solutions for parking as complementary to existing processes of city parking management and fares collection. An important educational role has to be done by municipalities and parking owners alike to communicate efficiently to the end-users about the importance and benefits of smart parking solutions.

Current old-legacy and siloed parking systems are becoming more expensive to maintain. In comparison with substantial costs of parking terminals and associated equipment like parking ticket dispensers (which should be resistant to moisture and dust), and the paper itself (which must be top coated), smart parking technologies offer:

- cost savings

- improved operational efficiency

- optimisation of parking capacity utilisation

- easy parking payments convenient for end-users

- cheaper collection of parking revenue for parking facility owners (compared with the process based on paper tickets and cash machines).

The adoption of city-wide smart parking can depend on the level of digitalisation maturity of the municipality, while customer uptake is conditioned partially by the penetration of mobile phones in a given location and is impacted by an awareness that solutions like smart parking applications exist and how they can ease parking pains.

Hospitals are one of the largest employers in a city and can be a part of city-integrated parking management (for both on-street and off-street parking), resulting in more optimised traffic. Hospital digital parking can be one of the elements of a larger ecosystem consisting of organisations migrating to new digital systems, increasing the “smartness” of city mobility as a whole. If every organisation with a parking infrastructure decided to digitalise it, then this could help scale up the digital transformation of parking and mobility across the city.

Like any other parking facilities, hospital parking lots are no exception and can be (and should be) digitalised — paving the way to more flexible management of spaces in a smart, technology-enabled way. Integrating data from public and private business entities about parking availability can constitute an urban parking data platform where both the end-users and parking owners can benefit from making parking more accessible.

(Parking) sharing is caring

Digitalising hospital parking empowers hospital administrators to manage parking resources more efficiently and sell the surplus of parking spots externally. This will allow agile operations of property parking and help with adaptation to the new reality with disrupted mobility and working patterns — which consequently impact the demand for parking.

The virtualisation of parking assets and management of parking space via software makes it possible to commercialise the use of parking facility — i.e. to sell or lease unoccupied parking spots to stakeholders other than hospital visitors. External clients (and payers) of a hospital parking lot may include:

- drivers (not being hospital employees, contractors, patients or their relatives) passing by the hospital and looking for some space to park

- other companies located nearby being with the need to provide parking spots for their firm’s clients, employees or guests.

With the digital parking upgrade, when all the parking spaces receive their “digital twin” and can be seen on a desktop or in a mobile application — these parking spaces may be put on sale on the market (i.e. via application) or allocated to the adjacent business partners. As a result, imbalances caused by changing parking demand can be removed, as parking space not used, for example, in the afternoon by one organisation can be utilised by other businesses or individuals. Parking sharing contributes to the sustainability of the building and more balanced urban mobility (fixed parking requirements and oversupply of parking spaces are often criticised, and more efficient — through technology — utilisation of the existing parking lots is an answer to this problem).

Another business model based on a digital parking ecosystem suitable to hospital facilities is subscription. In this case, parking is prepaid for a specific period, giving the subscriber, individual or business, the right to use the hospital’s parking space.

In general, upgrading parking kiosks with a contactless system and transforming of parking into an easy, touchless, frictionless process where visitors can seamlessly enter based on plate number recognition can enhance the parking experience. This not only applies to clinics but to any other organisation that plans to offer free or discounted parking space for their clients and deploys smart parking solutions to streamline such operations.

The value beyond parking

Since a hospital visit is usually an experience burdened with negative emotions, seamless parking warrants not only a faster way to park, pay and drive away but also provides an emotional value — a peace of mind. People heading into a clinic are in a specific emotional state and may perceive even the smallest issue as a stressful event. That is why it is important for a healthcare provider to eliminate any pain point (including parking) that may cause unnecessary stress to patients and their relatives.

To assure the composure of hospital visitors, the parking stay can be prepaid by visitors using a reservation feature on an app or covered by the hospital administration. In the last scenario the validation of whether an individual is entitled to free parking and linking them to a scheduled appointment could be processed digitally. Not only will this enhance the visitor experience, but it will also increase operational efficiency, reduce costs and eliminate parking misuse or overstays. Contactless parking verification and granting access — without the need to interact with anyone on-site — can also be deployed for seamless parking entry/exit for the hospital staff.

Future-proof and cost-efficient parking facility

The pandemic was a game changer and had a tremendous impact on the ways companies operate. But it also caused a decisive transformation during which digital technology was found to be the only right way to respond to changing circumstances and customer expectations. The impact of the COVID19 crisis can be considered an impetus for the change and a faster adoption of digital parking solutions as a means to optimise resource allocation and monetise from the owned parking infrastructure.

Technology-enabled and software-based parking make operations more agile and ensure the resilience of parking management. At the same time, parking digitalisation is a crucial element for future upgrades towards fully autonomous parking operations — with payments automatically executed when the driver leaves the car park, without the need for manual intervention.

Replacing old-legacy systems and hardware-intensive parking operations empowers both the end-users and parking owners, helping them reduce the cost of parking management. In research assessing OPEX costs in healthcare (part of which were parking lots costs), the comparison of the base case costs with the costs after incorporating digital services, show savings up to 20%[6].

Scheme 2 — Cost savings due to digitalisation

Table 1 — OPEX detail

Summary

Investment in digital technology is a driver of innovation and competitiveness while having a shorter payback in comparison with investment in physical infrastructure or hardware-intense technologies.

In the specific healthcare sector, digital innovations improve the quality of healthcare and work towards a patient-centred strategy. The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted advancements in smart city tech and the adoption of new technologies that support mobile and contactless operations. Automated parking access and exit and cashless parking payments enhance customers confidence — minimising the risk of virus transmission — and as a result, boost the total experience of the service.

In a world increasingly driven by technology, the approach to parking should be rethought. Medical centres adopt diverse intelligent technologies, AI and machine learning to support their operations. Similarly, their parking facilities can be digitally upgraded, making parking more efficient, more convenient, more sustainable and safer (virus-free).

New opportunities presented by smart parking technologies improve current processes, benefiting all the stakeholders: hospital visitors (ticketless, unmanned, cashless parking), hospital facility managers (greater operational efficiency, cost cut, additional revenue from selling parking spots to non-visitors), business partners (leasing hospital’s parking spots in an elastic model), and city (improved parking traffic, more balanced mobility, no waste of public space).

Replacing or complementing old-legacy parking technology like cash machines, ticket-based parking with an advanced smart parking technology, is a fundamental shift in the way parking is used and a step towards a 360-degree digital transformation of the hospital — so, the one that does not exclude parking facilities from a long-awaited digitalisation.