Katie Jennings / Business Insider
"Bedside helps you keep friends and family updated, coordinate visitors and gifts, and make your loved one's stay a little less lonely," the site's homepage reads.
New York City-based Tanooki Suit Labs created Bedside in 2012 as a "portfolio project for good," and they decided to leave it completely open source and free.
It will help people coordinate visits so that visitors are spread out evenly throughout the day instead of a huge crowd at once with large spaces in between visits. It also lets people update their friends and family and allows them to send messages in response.
Patients can also create wishlists so that visitors can bring them exactly what they want.
And the last cool feature on the site is that users can add tips and advice for specific hospitals so that patients and their friends and family can learn from those who were there before them. Users can share anything from how to get good parking to proper etiquette when visiting a patient.
It is completely free to create an account with Bedside. All you need to do is enter your email address, name, and password and then create a page by entering the patient's name, hospital, room, and visiting hours. Users will need to be invited to view the patient's page and add themselves to the visitor schedule.
Bedside seems pretty simple, but for something that can be so stressful and hectic, a little simplicity can go a long way.
Here's the site's homepage:
Bedside
This is what a patient page looks like:
Bedside
It is interesting to note that there is already an iOS app called Bedside that is also in the hospital space, though it is doctor-facing as opposed to patient-facing. Tanooki's Bedside does not yet have a mobile app, though its website uses responsive design so it's mobile-friendly. It is unclear if there would be issues with using the same name on a mobile app.
We reached out to the company for comment and will update when we hear back.