Netcall | Customer Story

Using automation to deliver medication to allergy sufferers

Using automation to improve process efficiencies, with robots to deal with complex tasks which are highly repetitive – this lends itself to robotic process automation.

Project highlights

Bots handle complex but repetitive tasks
Bots scan patient records faster
Ensure accuracy and pick up any anomalies in patient records
Enable staff to work on more valuable tasks – bringing greater benefits to patients
Saves time and money, with greater speed and capacity

At the forefront of automation

AZMM Hospital Maria Middelares in Belgium has always been at the forefront of using automation technology to improve process efficiencies. In 2018, they began using Netcall’s Liberty RPA solution, to reconcile payment and invoice processing between their ERP and finance systems. It’s a complex task which is highly repetitive – this lends itself to automation.

Using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in this way fixed the issues, without needing any modifications to the hospital’s ERP system. That saved a huge amount of additional time and money.

Automation for critical clinical systems

Having formed an automation centre of excellence (CoE), the hospital expanded their use of RPA further, this time to address a clinical need. And a critically important one.

They looked at dispensing prescription medication. It’s vital that patients are given the correct medication, especially those with severe allergies.

This involves two separate systems:

Electronic Patient Record – which holds the patient details including details of their allergies
Medication Management System – which has the details of any medication side effects

The software robot is now employed to check critical patient details, during and after their stay in hospital. This information (including specific allergies) is synchronised to the system used by the dispensing pharmacist, so that they ensure the correct medications are administered.

The robot has two key priorities:

Data accuracy – ensuring the right information is held for each patient; and
Capacity – additional capacity to process an increased amount of patient data

How fast could the robot doctor work?

The robot was able to scan patient records much faster than could have been done manually.

10,000 patient records were scanned across the first 20 days (which is 500 patients per day). These were done in two runs per day, each lasting 45 minutes. The robot was programmed to scan for key patient information including the patient’s weight, any allergy to penicillin or specific painkillers and test results on kidney function.

The Liberty RPA robot became known as the ‘robot doctor’. It picked up anomalies in 9 patient records out of the 10,000 processed. It ensured that those patients were not given any adverse medication for their condition.

The speed and accuracy of the robot doctor’s work rate cannot be replicated by a human. Thanks to this automation technology, members of staff have been able to work on other tasks which benefit their experience and bring greater benefits to patients.

— Kris Ranson, Head of Central Collection

Automation technology drives patient experience

The hospital’s CoE team continues to identify additional needs where Liberty RPA can help. They are looking at scanning patient records for early signs of diabetes and notifying the doctor in advance of the patient arriving for their next appointment.

AZMM Maria Middelares Hospital continues to advance their use of automation to improve the patient experience.