Understanding RPA

Emerging technologies used sporadically across the health and care system with ability to scale proving to be a significant challenge.

Continued struggle with volume of work vs continually increasing demand sometimes leading to poor outcomes and substandard experience.

COVID-19 driving existing backlogs, but also accelerating availability and use of technology across the sector.

The way work is delivered is beginning to change creates an opportunity for improving patient and staff experience.

Digitally enabled staff using technology to improve care quality, efficiency and maximising time with patients – adding value to patient care, getting it right the first time, with the right clinician, at the right time.

Digitally engaged patients with greater autonomy over their health and wellness – personalised care and empowered patients managing their own care and care plans.

The boundaries of where work is delivered and care is provided are changing as models of care move outside of hospital and care settings; Integrated Care Systems – end to end pathways with seamless handoffs and care with the right professional.

Seamless, real-time access to information in a single view at the point of need.

Robots are cheaper, faster, available 24/7 and can improve productivity and data quality, resulting in lower operational costs and hence better value for communities. Most organisations report 20-30% cost reduction and 30-50% Return On Investment (ROI) on RPA projects.

Robots collect information on everything they undertake, allowing for full, retroactive inspection on every transaction they have undertaken.

Available 100% of the time 24/7 – the robots will never need to sleep, they will undertake their work whenever required, giving back time for clinical and non-clinical activities.

Robots increase the capacity of organisations allowing them to do more with less/same resources, which then allow teams to tackle care backlogs faster.

By giving robots the mundane tasks, employees focus on the things that people do best (thinking, deciding, producing, and creating). This improves staff resilience – more time to do transformational work and adopt new ways of working.

RPA undertakes tasks 4 to 10 times faster than a person, which means more patients can be seen in the same amount of time.

RPA robots only do what they are told (no human errors) and will never mis-key, miscalculate or have a bad day; provided input data and business rules are correct, output data will be correct and consequently improve patient safety.

Robots are easy to schedule and assign to automations once they have been created. They can also be updated relatively quickly if the process requirements change, increasing responsiveness for patients.

Robots work with existing applications and systems that an organisation has, which enable fast-tracking to digital transformation.

Better staff satisfaction results in reduced attrition across organisations. Increasingly, companies are focusing on this as a main benefit they seek from RPA.

Typically it can be 3 to 5 months due to IT procedures and processes.

Mitigation: engage IT early with dedicated support from day 1.

Delivering changes and updates to your RPA solution can be limited through internal change processes and timescales.

Mitigation: clarify and understand your IT change processes to avoid delays.

Processes are typically more complex than at first glance and can cause delays to successful delivery.

Mitigation: be driven by data, not perception. Identify and engage process experts early and follow a lean-based methodology to reduce variation and exceptions in your existing processes.

RPA Solutions are available on Cloud and on-Prem – with significantly differing costs and capability.

Mitigation: plan early, with a clear future vision of your solution architecture, hosting and security.

Can cause robots to fail and impact process operations, including business critical processes.

Mitigation: define your business continuity processes for critical processes - including manual fall-back plans.

Activities that can be performed by following well-defined rules are a good fit for RPA.

Consider adding case management or process workflow in the mix for more complex processes and decisions that require human judgement.

The higher the volume and frequency, the higher the potential for saving staff time and reducing risk and human error.

In some cases, low volume tasks can also be a good fit if there are needs for reducing human error to improved compliance and to manage risks.

Tasks with limited variation and fewer exceptions are a great fit.

Consider case management or enterprise workflow solutions for dynamic processes.

Tasks that mature and stay relatively unchanged are a great fit.

Processes that change often require changing the RPA scripts. The resulting overhead may defeat the purpose of automation.

Processes that require limited or no changes to existing systems are a good fit.

If the underlying system needs change, then it defeats the purpose of automation.

Tasks that require working with structured data and readable electronic inputs (Excel, Word, PDFs) are a good fit.

Consider adding OCR (optical character recognition) and other IA/AI technologies to the mix if the data is unstructured or in a format that is not readable, such as images.

Low complexity and repetitive admin tasks take staff away from patient care. Being able to give that time back in both clinical and non-clinical settings can have significant operational impact and can improve patient care and outcomes.

Depending on what stage an RPA programme is in, setting-up costs might require significant investment. Hence, it is critical that there is a well-defined and validated benefits case which outlines clinical and non-clinical operational impact. To deliver that, identifying the high volume, low complexity, high value opportunities will be imperative in driving the success of the programme.

Like any other transformation programmes, RPA initiatives also require the right ownership and engagement from key stakeholders at the right levels. Right type of opportunities that enable successful delivery of the benefits case are the key to driving the success of the programme and gaining stakeholder buy-in. If in doubt, go for volume. 

Projects and programme teams will need to work hand in hand with clinical and non–clinical functions to blend the functional expertise with technical knowledge to identify the right opportunities.
 

Appointments: freeing up and matching capacity

• rostering
• DNA/CNA – reminders and rebooking
• bed management

Supplementing clinical judgement*

• imaging
• case note change tracking
• coding discharge letters
• key controls (for example – end-of-life, drug seeking, child protection)

Transition between different care providers

• out-of-hours
• anticipatory care plans*
• medication mapping / reconciliation
• lab results and blood tests

Improving data quality

• patient records – registrations updates and reconciliation
• patient record analysis for proactive care*
• immunisation records
• clinical evaluation forms

Note: *based on scope and output of the use case, Medical device regulations might be applicable.

Strategy and planning: analysis of reports, legislation and contracts

Used alongside cognitive technologies to help with:

• report intelligence
• compliant clauses
• contract leakage

Budgets and reporting

Used alongside AI and analytics to better manage:

• gathering, cleaning, processing and interpreting data
• predictive budgeting and forecasting
• approval workflows

Risk management

Used alongside Intelligent Automation to improve:

• risk factor monitoring
• counter fraud processes
• decision making

Programmes and projects

• monitoring and responding to data to drive triggers
• automated report generation and distribution
• aupport to real time analytics

Human resources

• joiners and leavers (account creation/privileges)
• temporary staff management
• employee information maintenance 

Finance and accounting (including payroll) 

• accounts payable and invoicing
• reconciliation
• operational cost management
• reduced approval times

Procurement and supply chain

• automated sign off and approval workflow
• order confirmation
• supply replenishment and inventory control
• supplier performance (fulfilment)

Inventory management

• informatics and reporting
• monitoring and responding to data to drive triggers
• automated report generation and distribution
• support to real time analytics

Robotic Process Automation, or robots, or bots, refers to software code that can perform manual processes and create streamlined workflows. RPA only automates repetitive human activities freeing them from rote administrative work to focus on innovative and creative aspects of their work.

Bots can eliminate human errors and greatly reduce noise in statistics, however they are only as good as the information that is put into them. Bots are programmed to execute the formulas they are fed and as such, if there are errors in the logic of their code, they will continue to replicate those errors indefinitely.

One of the biggest advantages of deploying RPA is instant results and quicker ROI compared to other transformation initiatives. The other important thing to remember is that RPA does not require replacing existing systems, instead it adds automation to existing systems to mimic human behaviour.

RPA programmes are a collaborative effort between business and IT. IT support is required to provide necessary resources and oversight for the platform, applications and RPA software to function smoothly.

RPA is rule-based algorithms which can be used to capture, process and interpret streams of data, trigger appropriate responses and communicate with other processes. However, it cannot learn on its own – a key trait of an AI system.

For business and functional users, there are no programming skills required. They just need to understand characteristics of processes that fit automation. Although, now there is low code software than can allow these users to build their own automation without any requirement of programming skills.

Humans are indeed required to programme the RPA bots, to feed them tasks for automation and to manage them. There’s also the efficiency factor which comes into play – the RPA systems are fast, and almost completely avoid faults in the system or the process that are otherwise caused due to human error.