Transforming Healthcare with Intelligent Automation

Digital transformation has long been a priority for healthcare and the impact of Covid-19 has only served to highlight the need for automation technology. As a result, the implementation of tools such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), has picked up pace. By automating repetitive, admin-heavy processes, RPA has been able to ease some of the burden on clinicians suffering from process overload, freeing up more of their time so that they can focus on patient care. 

Findings from a recent automation survey by NHSX, the team responsible for driving digital change in the NHS, make for interesting reading. Responses from clinicians and digital health innovators providing RPA solutions, offer insight into the value of automation in driving innovation in healthcare. Findings also highlight the challenges and barriers to adoption and scaling of automation across an industry so reliant on different systems and admin-heavy processes. 

You can find the full results here, but here are some of their key findings:

Top priorities for RPA, beyond cost reduction

• increased productivity and time management;
• increased clinical efficiency;
• improved process integration;
• continuous improvement.

Barriers and challenges to RPA adoption

• knowledge gap resulting in RPA initiatives not being prioritised;
• lack of skilled employees with the capability to develop, deploy, and maintain RPA processes;
• cost of implementation;
• lack of process governance.

The responses from those not using RPA highlighted a lack of understanding of RPA and its benefits, concerns around cost, and a lack of case studies and success stories from other Trusts.

Highlighting the success stories

Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust

The Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust has seen great success from the automation of a number of labour intensive and error prone admin processes. The Trust has made significant time and cost savings, improved accuracy of patient data, and has been able to release valuable staff time for frontline patient services. The automation of a monthly GP referral process has resulted in an estimated saving of over 10,000 hours per year, and has improved the accuracy of information. All of which has resulted in better patient care.

 “Our vision at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust is ‘working together to provide outstanding care for our community’. Automating admin processes using Toca.io is releasing staff from mundane tasks, giving them more time to care. Instead of spending hours inputting information, they’re able to answer phones, and focus on giving patients a better experience. We’re optimistic that the work we’ve done with Toca.io has opened up lots of further opportunities to refine what we do and work more efficiently.”

Nigel Uwins, Assistant Director IT, Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust

Working together to improve healthcare

We’re proud to be playing our part in the digital transformation of the NHS and improving patient care. Here are some stats from our healthcare partnerships so far:

• 600% increase in productivity with 80,000 patient records updated in 2 weeks;
• 10,000 work hours saved with a single process automation;
• 15 people freed from manual processing with automation of 1,200 monthly GP referrals;
• 48 hours to add diagnostic and alert EPR updates for 2,600 Covid-19 shielded patients.

About Toca.io for Healthcare

To learn more about our current work with our NHS clients and to discover how Toca.io can help you fast-track your digital transformation click here..  

Toca.io offers straightforward and quickly deployable solutions for NHS Trusts burdened with process overload. Whether it’s clearing a backlog of appointment data, transferring information from out of date platforms, or bringing different systems together, we can save hundreds of work hours, freeing dedicated health professionals to concentrate on delivering care.