Case Study: A 3D Hospital Space Configurator for Hillrom (Baxter)

Most writing about 3D configurators is about webshops: a customer picks a fabric, the sofa updates, the cart fills. This 3D configurator case study is about a different kind of project, a sales tool. For Hillrom, now part of Baxter, we built a browser-based hospital space configurator that their sales teams use to walk buyers through complete hospital rooms in 3D. Here's the problem it solves, what the tool actually does, and how it got built.

The problem

Hospital equipment has a demo problem that photography can't fix. The products are physically large, heavy, and regulated, far too large to haul into every sales meeting. Demoing them traditionally meant arranging on-site visits, and arranging those demos across multiple hospital departments is expensive and slow.

The deeper issue is context. A hospital bed in a white studio photo tells a buying committee nothing about how it fits a real room, with real clearances, alongside the other equipment a facility already owns. The product only makes sense in context, and describing a configured room over a phone call or a screen share doesn't land the way seeing it does.

And hospital buying isn't one person making one decision. Buying committees rarely fit in one room, which means even a successful on-site demo only reaches some of the people who need to see the equipment before anyone signs off.

What we built

We built a virtual hospital walkthrough, a hospital equipment configurator set inside the rooms where the products actually live. Buyers start in a hospital lobby and navigate into different rooms, moving between spaces through cinematic transitions and exploring products like the H900 bed along the way.

Inside a room, the sales rep or the buyer can place the equipment, change the setup, and view it from any angle. Instead of imagining how a bed fits a ward from a brochure photo, the buyer sees the setup their facility would actually get.

The whole thing runs in the browser at a link. No app to download, no VR headset, no IT approval on the buyer's side. It loads on a laptop, a tablet, or a phone, which matters when your audience is a committee spread across departments rather than one person at one desk.

You don't have to take our word for any of this. The Hillrom walkthrough is one of the live demos on our homepage, so you can try it yourself in the same browser you're reading this in.

How it was built

The project followed the same process we use for every build, which we describe in full on our 3D configurator development page. In short:

Scope first. A project like this starts with a scope call: which products, which rooms, which workflows the sales team needs. That becomes a scope document and a fixed quote before any development starts.

3D assets before code. For hospital equipment, accurate models are the hard part. Equipment models get built or converted from existing source material and optimized to run fast in a browser, and the client approves them before development begins. There's a useful side effect here: once accurate equipment models exist, the same models can later do double duty in staff training tools.

Build, review, hand over. The configurator itself is built in Three.js, with progress visible on a live link rather than in slide decks. The team that will actually use the tool tests it on their own devices, against real sales conversations, and adjustments happen until it does the job it was scoped to do. At handover the client gets the code, the 3D assets, and documentation.

The decision that shaped everything else was making it browser-based. A sales team can't ask every prospect to install software, and a tool that needs IT involvement on the buyer's side dies in procurement. WebGL means the walkthrough works on whatever device the buyer already has, and it means the tool can be shared as a plain link, which turns out to be the feature reps use most.

What changed

We'll be upfront about something we say in all our writing: we don't publish conversion percentages or measured results from client projects, because clean before-and-after measurement is rarer than vendor marketing suggests. What we can describe is what changed qualitatively in how Hillrom's teams sell.

A rep no longer needs to ship a hospital bed to a demo. The conversation moves from "imagine this in your ward" to "here it is in your ward, pick the rail option." The product discussion happens in front of the product, even when the product is a room full of equipment that exists only as a 3D model in a browser tab.

The tool also works outside the meeting. Sales teams can share a live product environment before, during, and after buyer conversations. The committee member who couldn't attend gets the same link and explores the equipment in context on their own schedule, instead of relying on a colleague's summary.

And instead of arranging on-site demos, buyers experience the full product line from their browser. The walkthrough doesn't replace every physical evaluation a hospital will ever do, but it changes which conversations need one.

Considering something similar?

The pattern here isn't specific to hospitals. It fits any equipment maker whose product is too big, too heavy, or too regulated to demo in person: the product makes sense in context, the buyers are a committee, and the demo needs to travel as a link.

If that sounds like your product, two pages are worth your time. Our 3D sales tools page covers this category of work in depth, including the Hillrom project and others like it. And our 3D configurator development page walks through the process, the pricing logic, and what you own at handover. Or skip the reading and tell us what you sell, and we'll tell you honestly whether a tool like this fits.