The time has come for maps and directions to offer this same robust experience inside locations, from airports and college campuses to health care and resort facilities.

Technologies that help us find our way indoors are a relatively nascent development. At The Johns Hopkins Hospital, when we opened two new clinical towers in 2012, we created a cross-platform mobile and desktop interactive floor map that highlights important hospital locations and includes features that patients and their families may find useful when navigating the hallways. The floor map continues to receive thousands of views each month by staff and visitors alike. Many of our colleagues at leading health care organizations are creating similar mapping systems.

Growth in indoor mapping isn’t limited to health care. Industry leader Google recently launched indoor mapping for Android phones. Apple’s newly released iPhone 6 also has a new technology that will hopefully help developers build apps with a greater degree of indoor mapping accuracy. A major hurdle, however, is the need for indoor point-to-point directions, and this requires the construction of robust databases. Showing users their real-time tracking, the “blue dot,” is simply not enough. However, a new technology may come to the rescue.

Called beacons, these small electronic transmitters are the size of a doorbell and are designed with the retail customer in mind. Placed on a storefront, beacons broadcast signals that can trigger messages on your phone, such as a coupon for a free coffee that appears as you pass your local coffee shop. While this may sound somewhat intrusive, it’s easy to imagine the potential for this technology as applied to hospitals and health care facilities, where patients trying to locate appointments could receive push messages to guide them on their way.