Virtual Tours for Hospitals, Clinics and Healthcare: Reassuring Patients and Recruiting Staff

A hospital is the one building people most want to see before they arrive and least often can. Wards are restricted, theatres are sterile, and an anxious patient cannot drop in for a look around. Virtual tours solve that, and healthcare has become one of the sectors we work in most, from NHS maternity units to high-containment research laboratories. This article covers the four uses we see, with examples, and the privacy practice that goes with them.

Reassuring patients before admission

Anxiety about the unknown is worst for maternity, mental health, paediatric and surgical admissions. The Poole maternity ward tour lets expectant parents see the birthing rooms, pools and postnatal ward before the day, with hotspots explaining what to bring and where to park. The Lavender Walk adolescent mental health unit tour was commissioned so that young people and families could see the unit before an admission. Both are examples of a tour doing something a website page of text cannot.

Recruiting clinical staff

Nurses, doctors and allied health professionals choose between employers partly on the working environment. A tour of the ward, theatre suite, staff room and education centre, linked from the job advert, shows candidates what they would be joining. Barts Health's #ShapeYourStory campaign used 360 content to recruit into critical care.

Donors, stakeholders and the public

Research charities and institutes need to show supporters what their money funds, inside laboratories the public will never enter. The Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group, Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Target Ovarian Cancer's Nicola Murray Centre all use tours this way, with hotspots introducing the researchers and the work.

Private clinics and dental practices

For private healthcare the tour is a conversion tool. Patients comparing implant clinics, fertility clinics or physiotherapy practices want to see a clean, calm, modern environment before they commit to expensive treatment. EvoDental Edinburgh and Create Fertility Bristol chose Google Street View tours, which appear on the clinic's Google Business Profile as well as its website. Google's own guidance says a complete Business Profile makes customers 2.7 times more likely to consider a business reputable and 70% more likely to visit, and its 2015 research found listings with a virtual tour twice as likely to generate interest.

Privacy, infection control and access

We photograph clinical areas when they are empty or with consent, blur anything identifiable (patient boards, paperwork, screens) and can supply the tour for review by the communications and information governance teams before it is published. Our photographers follow each site's gowning and hand hygiene procedures, and equipment can be wiped down and sealed for sterile or containment areas. Tours can be password protected or kept off the public web entirely for internal training use.

Bespoke, Matterport or Google?

Patient-facing and donor-facing tours are usually bespoke, because they need hotspots, custom navigation and sometimes accessibility features such as screen-reader support. Matterport suits estates teams who want a measurable record of a department, and Google Street View suits clinics that want to be found on Maps. Our hospital and laboratory tours page has more, or get in touch for a clear price.