Digital Innovation Using AWS and Amazon Alexa with Enlighted

Enlighted provides industry-leading Internet of Things sensors, lighting and environmental controls, and workplace experience apps. The company also offers an RTLS called Location
Intelligence, which it built using AWS.

Enlighted recently updated Location Intelligence, using machine learning to raise its accuracy to 98 percent. “We have hospital and long-term-care customers where asset tracking is a significant pain point,” says Nick Gigov, head of research and architecture at Enlighted. “The staff spends a lot of time looking for equipment instead of focusing on patient care. It’s critical that we can pinpoint specific rooms.”

In January 2022, AWS invited Enlighted to an executive visioning workshop. At the workshop, Enlighted executives met with AWS leaders to discuss creating a shared strategy for their partnership and thinking bigger about joint opportunities. “The AWS workshop expanded our vision of what’s possible,” says Philipp Wehn, vice president of innovation at Enlighted. “The collaboration solidified a strong path forward for the Enlighted product and innovation teams. That was absolutely game changing for us.” A part of Enlighted’s expanded vision was voice-control capabilities.

Following the workshop, Enlighted worked to productize the enhanced version of Location Intelligence, focusing specifically on the healthcare industry. Along the way, the company regularly met with solutions architects at AWS to discuss aspects of the project and adopt best practices for developing cloud solutions.

Enlighted wanted to make Location Intelligence even easier to use. “Healthcare workers are overloaded and often don’t have time to learn additional technologies,” says Gigov. “Bringing in voice capabilities was a natural solution to extend the user interface and make it convenient for people looking for assets.” When Enlighted mentioned the idea to AWS, AWS brought in experts from Alexa to flesh it out. Together, Enlighted, AWS, and Alexa held another workshop in December 2022 to discuss how Location Intelligence could meet needs specific to the healthcare sector.

Beginning in January 2023, AWS sent dedicated engineers to Enlighted to build a prototype of the voice-control feature that Enlighted imagined adding to Location Intelligence. Just 6 weeks later, the team had a working prototype of its solution. “The quality and speed of the work of this team were outstanding,” says Wehn.

The prototype voice-control feature, when embedded in Location Intelligence, can respond to questions like “Where is the closest wheelchair?” or statements such as “I need a nurse.” Its response shares the location of the nearest requested item. With voice control, Enlighted saw an 80 percent decrease in both the time and the number of interactions it took to find an asset. The prototype also supports multiple user types according to authorization levels so that, for example, nurses or inventory specialists have access to information within a scope adjusted to their roles.

As of the second quarter of 2023, Enlighted has deployed Location Intelligence with the voice-control prototype for 13 customers across North America and Europe, with three additional pilot projects ongoing. Location Intelligence now serves more than 10,000 people and covers one million square feet of building space across four countries. “The voice-control feature will absolutely change the RTLS market globally,” says Wehn. “By working with the AWS team, we have accelerated our route to innovation.”