The National Guard Health Affairs (NGHA) has partnered with Penguin Location Services to design and deploy a customized indoor and outdoor navigation system across its network of five medical cities in Saudi Arabia. The solution will be integrated directly into NGHA’s existing mobile healthcare app, giving patients and visitors turn-by-turn wayfinding from arrival to their destination — inside and outside the building.
NGHA is one of the largest government-funded multispecialty healthcare systems in the MENA region. Its five comprehensive medical cities are distributed across Saudi Arabia, each serving high volumes of patients navigating large, complex campuses. Providing reliable, accessible wayfinding across those environments has been a persistent operational challenge — and the partnership with Penguin directly addresses it.
What the System Delivers
The PenNav deployment at NGHA will introduce a comprehensive set of navigation and patient communication capabilities across all five medical city campuses:
Real-time location services integrated into NGHA’s mobile app — patients see exactly where they are on the campus map at all times.
Natural-language wayfinding from the parking entrance to the clinic door — covering both outdoor routes and interior corridors without switching apps.
Patients search by department, specialist, or service and receive direct navigation to that destination — eliminating the need to ask staff for directions.
Personalized reminders and updates delivered through the app based on the patient’s current location — appointment alerts, preparation instructions, and next-step guidance.
Dedicated routing options for patients with mobility needs — wheelchair-accessible paths, elevator-priority routes, and reduced-distance alternatives where available.
Aggregated movement data reveals where patients lose time, where congestion develops, and where wayfinding improvements will have the most operational impact.
Why Navigation Matters at Scale
In a large medical city, navigation is not a convenience — it is a clinical and operational necessity. Patients who cannot find their destination miss appointments. Families under stress make poor decisions when they are lost. Staff spend time redirecting visitors rather than focusing on care delivery. And bottlenecks at registration, imaging, or outpatient areas cascade into delays that affect the entire facility.
PenNav directly addresses each of these failure modes — reducing missed appointments caused by navigation difficulty, improving patient flow through complex multi-building campuses, and relieving the administrative burden that falls on staff when wayfinding infrastructure is inadequate.
Aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030
This deployment reflects NGHA’s active commitment to digital transformation in healthcare — a priority that sits at the center of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 healthcare modernization strategy. By integrating advanced wayfinding technology into the NGHA mobile app, the partnership sets a new benchmark for patient experience across the Kingdom’s healthcare system.
Frequently Asked Questions About Hospital Indoor Navigation
What is hospital indoor navigation and how does it work?
Why can’t hospitals just use Google Maps for indoor navigation?
How does indoor navigation reduce missed appointments in hospitals?
Can hospital indoor navigation support patients with mobility needs?
Does hospital indoor navigation require a separate app?
What operational benefits does indoor navigation provide for hospital administrators?
Bring PenNav to Your Healthcare Facility
Whether you operate a single hospital or a multi-site health system, PenNav delivers the indoor navigation infrastructure your patients need — integrated into the app you already have.
