How Zona Medica Transformed Its Patient Experience

Zona Medica has spent years doing something that sets it apart from a typical medical center: running a shared workspace for specialist doctors where the experience of every person who walks through the door comes first.

This philosophy recently earned them the Joan Future of Work Award 2026, part of the European Winners recognition. The award celebrates organizations that reimagine how spaces function, and Zona Medica stood out for showing what thoughtful technology adoption looks like in one of the most demanding, human-centered environments there is.

"Each doctor has their image, their name. The patients who come to our space must feel that it is their doctor's own office," says Timo Gozzi, Operations Manager at Zona Medica.

A different kind of medical center

Zona Medica operates differently from a traditional medical center. The organization itself does not practice medicine. Instead, it runs a medical workspace where specialist doctors set up their practices, see patients, and focus entirely on medicine.

They handle legal compliance, engineering, facilities, customer service, human resources, and purchasing.

"We are an external qualified supplier," Timo explains. "We take care of the servicing, the customer journey, and the installations. But the medicine is the doctor's job."

When every doctor update meant a trip to the door

A multidisciplinary center presents an operational challenge. Specialist doctors share office spaces, working on rotating schedules that shift across mornings, afternoons, and days of the week. One office might host a cardiologist on Monday morning, an orthopedic surgeon on Tuesday afternoon, and a dermatologist on Wednesday.

For patients, none of that complexity should be visible. Each person arriving for their appointment should feel as though they are walking into their doctor's own practice, with the right name, the right branding, and the right welcome at the door.

For years, Zona Medica managed this with physical displays. Manual signs that had to be changed by hand each time a doctor rotated in or out. The process was time-consuming, prone to error, and entirely dependent on staff remembering to update them. More importantly, it limited how professionally each doctor's individual brand could be presented.

The search for a smarter display solution

The search for a better solution led Timo through several options. He considered tablets, generic information screens, and various software platforms. The requirements were clear: remote management, online customization, the ability to display each doctor's individual logo and information, and a system that would work consistently without requiring constant technical intervention.

Joan met those requirements. With Joan devices mounted at each office door, Zona Medica can now update every display remotely through Joan CMS. Each doctor's unique branding, schedule, and information are automatically displayed on their office door.

"Joan allows us to personalize with the logos of each doctor or their unit," Timo says. "We can change it online, deal with it remotely. That was exactly what we needed."

The implementation has grown steadily as the team has validated what works and expanded across the center, with plans to continue rolling out devices to cover the full breadth of the facility.

A welcome experience that works for everyone

Beyond the individual office doors, Zona Medica has extended Joan further into the patient experience with digital displays. At the center's main entrance, a large Sony screen connected to Joan CMS now displays a daily directory of doctors and offices. A patient arrives, receives their number at reception, and the entrance screen tells them exactly which office to go to.

"Everything flows from that first direction," Timo notes. This integration between Joan CMS and the physical entrance experience creates a coherent arrival journey from the moment someone walks in to the moment they reach the right door.

Automating the admin so staff can focus on people

Underneath all of this sits a philosophy that Timo articulates with clarity. Technology should handle what technology can handle, so that people can focus entirely on people.

"If a process can be automated, it should be," he says. "Let Joan handle those tasks, so our team can give their full attention to the patients and doctors."

This matters especially in a medical environment. Scheduling, wayfinding, information accuracy, privacy compliance are very important. When they run smoothly and invisibly, the staff can give their full attention to the relationship between a person and their doctor.

For Timo, the measure of good technology is simple. "Technology should support the team, not replace them," Timo says. They should feel that machines are freeing them to do their best work.

A model designed to scale across locations

Zona Medica's ambition does not stop at the current center. The model is designed for replication - creating and launching medical environments for health professionals across different locations and scales. Joan grows with that vision.

"We found that there are a lot of things we can do with Joan," Timo says. "The aim is to automate all the processes in the coming years, and then invest our resources and our time in humans. We want to create a better customer journey and provide a better service to the patient."

Ready to see how Joan can help your organization work better? Let's talk.