St Joseph’s Hospital in Florida has become the first health care facility to use checkout-free technology in a hospital cafeteria.

Located inside the hospital, Season’s Café uses Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology to eliminate checkout lines and allow guests access to the full range of cafeteria items 24 hours a day, Monday to Saturday. The cafeteria is only closed from 2am to 6am on Sundays. Employees will also be able to use their badge to pay through an integration between Just Walk Out technology and Quickcharge (transactcampus.com/solutions/quickcharge), a division of Transact Campus.

Amazon’s Just Walk Out (justwalkout.com) technology is designed to be an effortless shopping experience. Guests enter the cafeteria by using their credit card, mobile wallet or team member badge at the entry gate. The technology detects what each shopper takes from or returns to the shelves and creates a virtual shopping cart. When guests have completed their shopping, they can leave the store without having to wait in a checkout queue, and their chosen payment method will be charged for the items they took with them.

“More than 4000 team members, physicians, volunteers and visitors per day will experience a quick and seamless shopping experience with wholesome and comforting food choices,” said Erica Salgado, BayCare east region director of food and nutrition services.

Just Walk Out technology is made possible by artificial intelligence, computer vision and deep learning techniques, including generative AI, which enables the technology to determine accurately who took what in any retail environment. Amazon built synthetic datasets to mimic millions of realistic shopping scenarios including variations in store format, lighting conditions and even crowds of shoppers to ensure accuracy in any environment.

“BayCare’s innovation team led this effort to streamline the customer experience inside Season’s Café, taking into consideration the busy schedules of our hospital staff, as well as visitors,” said Craig Anderson, BayCare vice president. “This technology will allow our store to operate longer hours, providing an array of healthy food options for third-shift employees and late-night visitors.”

Jon Jenkins, vice president at Amazon, added: “We’re thrilled to launch the first hospital cafeteria powered by Just Walk Out technology at St Joseph’s Hospital. We look forward to building on this work with BayCare Health System and providing more hospital employees access to healthy meals at any time of day.”

The cafeteria offers a variety of items, from baked goods, premade sandwiches and a salad bar, to fresh pizza and hot meals that change daily. Menu items from guest restaurants are often available.

St Joseph’s Hospital (BayCare.org/SJH), part of the BayCare Health System, was founded in 1934 by the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany. The 615-bed hospital is in Tampa, Florida.