Role of RPA in healthcare

Robotic process automation (RPA) has emerged as a useful tool to enhance organizational efficiency. Is RPA making a difference even in the Indian hospitals today? A report.

- MANJUSHA ANIL

Data collected and processed by healthcare organizations emanates from multiple sources such as laboratory, clinical, scheduling, or radiology systems, online-including insurance portals, and applications such as ERP and HR, several of which can also be external sources. Effectively leveraging the data is a cumbersome, costly process. That is where robotic process automation (RPA) comes into play.

Why RPA?

RPA can be a boon for India's healthcare companies overburdened by heavy workloads and stringent compliances. Regulations necessitate laborious documentation and reporting that consume time and resources when done manually.

Manual documentation leaves gaps in the system affecting patient experience and potentially leading to financial and legal issues. To avoid this, hospitals are now investing in RPA systems. Being easy to configure RPA systems leverage a hospital's existing applications such as email, EHR, or other enterprise software.

"Many hospitals use RPA to automate clinical workflows, patient scheduling, billing, invoice processing, and human resource workflows today. Modern RPA systems also aid, simplify, and provide a human feel to the users," informs Akshay Oleti, Business Head, Fortis Hospitals, Bengaluru.

Many redundant operations and decisions in healthcare facilities depend on the reliability of precise figures, elaborates Dr Preet Pal Thakur, Co-founder, Glamyo Health. "Some routine work prevalent across hospital systems includes patient onboarding and follow-ups, medical invoicing and claims handling, generating reports for practitioners, and medication management. These variables create an ideal ground for RPA implementation."

The adoption status