Enriching human intelligence with digital technology strengths

The demand for healthcare would likely be placed at the top of a list of challenging issues in the twenty-first century. Our society is growing at a dramatic speed, and we need to acknowledge that an increase in diseases of all kinds accompanies that growth. We are coming to see that everything is connected, especially when it comes to the quality of healthcare, time for patients, and costs. Understanding these connections was one of the goals at our most recent?Executive Summit , where I met with bright minds in the healthcare sector from more than 40 countries.

And while we all agree that healthcare should be accessible to everyone, the debate over cost pressures and the shortage of medical professionals is a huge challenge for our society, our industry, and Siemens Healthineers. Digitalization is key for resolving all of these issues – not just for our customers but also for our finance departments, where we established the bionic finance approach.

For both, we combine the strengths of human beings (knowledge, intuition, experience) with the unparalleled power of digital systems (statistics, large quantities of data, artificial intelligence) to increase efficiency and effectiveness. Below are some examples of efficiency gains that?help our customers ?"do more with less."

Bionic finance helps address similar challenges in our business processes. This term describes the application of biological principles in technical or financial contexts. Drawing from this approach, at Siemens Healthineers we’ve orchestrated the interconnectivity of digital technologies and applications for our financial experts to more effectively utilize their skills.

The different forms of digitalization allow us to make data-driven decisions based on key performance indicators (KPIs). Instead of having to spend valuable time tracking the details of a product group or business, our experts interpret structured data, simulate scenarios, and analyze various data-set factors that are provided semi-automatically by our digital tools in order to drive profitable growth. Using data analytics might even allow us to discover new correlations between variables that weren’t known or considered significant that could improve business and supply chain forecasts. The finance department uses data to orchestrate all kinds of decision making: for example, for crisis preparedness.

“Bionic finance gives us strategic advantages that we’re putting to good use.”

Bionic finance plays an important role by enriching human capabilities with technology. A well-structured pool of high-quality data covering all areas of the business is the prerequisite for this approach.

To adhere to these requirements, we launched Project Hera to provide high-quality data in a well-structured form. It’s a holistic approach to unlocking the value of company-wide data. The project provides a transparent platform with an integrated front end for fact-based decisions, advanced reporting, and analysis functions. With the goal of offering a one-stop shop for all relevant reporting and analytics content, the Project Hera team generated a uniform pool of data for our statistic exercises. Analyzing data using the above-mentioned methods allows us to draw conclusions that an individual could never arrive at through manual work. Here are three examples of data-driven results:

(1)?Automatic?process data-mining?shows us the variations in the complex order and payment process in individual countries – all without having to rely on gut instinct, forgetting anything, or missing anything. By analyzing variability, we can quickly solve problems throughout the company. Order processing time has been cut by more than 60 percent, and more than 30,000 hours of manual work has been automated.

(2)?With the help of AI, we generate individual?liquidity plans?in more than 30 currencies on a rolling per-day basis for 70 countries. Overnight, the tool collects two million internal data points per day on factors like FX rates and interest rates. This allows us to generate a new daily forecast for every day of the year. It even models seasonal factors and the ongoing effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

(3)?We’re making our?price negotiations?more efficient. Approval processes can be highly manual and therefore very time-consuming, but that’s no longer a given. With the support of AI, we can analyze relevant KPIs along with our market share and profitability targets. The algorithm generates recommendations for the best offerings that integrate the needs of customers, patients, and our company. Our new process takes approximately 25 percent less time and automates approximately 4,000 hours of manual work per year.

These examples from the domain of finance in medical technology illustrate the benefits of data-driven decisions based on AI-structured data that human beings alone couldn’t compile. They show how we can meaningfully guide finance and medical professionals – objectively, transparently, efficiently, and effortlessly.

By freeing up time for truly essential work, AI creates great value for patients, clinics, and businesses.