Anyone have experience in their health organisation with RPA?
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Hi Ruth. I know that Hutt Valley and Auckland DHB’s have used Blue Prism as there RPA tool around Referrals. At TDHB we are also looking at it to automate the transcribing of BPAC Referrals into WebPAS in the first instance.
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That would be really cool.
Adrian Lumsden at CC. HV and Wr DHBs is a contact. They are doing some new stuff.
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ADHB did a trial with the RMS to PAS - and it was really good
They are now in procurement to find “the one” for the region - still pending an outcome
I have so many plans to “plug the air gap” with one of these
The biggest challenges are
- naming it
- feeding and watering it
set up of it will be all well and good - but like all things, it’s when it fails that we need to make sure the process around that are robust - and that we pick it up quickly and set it back in motion
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Hi Ruth,
ADHB are doing some work on it now. WDHB and CMH are looking at it.
Cheers jenny
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I’ve done a couple of stories about Mercy Radiology https://www.hinz.org.nz/news/454749/Robot-joins-Mercy-Radiologys-finance-team.htm
and Hutt Valley https://www.hinz.org.nz/news/news.asp?id=441403&hhSearchTerms=“hutt+and+valley”
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Hi Ruth, I’m leading RPA for Auckland DHB and happy to provide any insights and share our journey. We successfully completed a PoC last year around using BluePrism RPA to search/validate new eReferrals in Concerto and schedule these in PHS. The PoC was limited to 8 out of the 70+ services and demonstrated savings of 10.4 hours per day it was run. Currently, we’re at the tail-end of the RFP - in fact, vendor demo’s are set for this week. Also, we are liaising with other metro DHB’s around setting this up as a regional capability.
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Thanks @parag that would be good.
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I was going to be helpful and send you the contact details for the CNIO at the RPA in Sydney- but I guess that might not be what you are looking for.
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We are at RPA next week Tuesday so go for it
Aaron Jones +61433095548
Really great guy, has been in the role for a few years now and has done some big EMR implementations across Sydney
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Just to throw out a different view… from my perspective RPA is an interim win but one that needs to be combined with a long term plan to address the integration with more robust mechanisms (i.e. pay down the technical debt from RPA).
- RPA means you have a generic user writing into the clinical application, which is not a great security move / audit move. You now have to extend controls to RPA technology audit.
- Often RPA implementation leads to the challenge that changes in source or destination systems need to be carefully managed to avoid breaking the RPA.
- You need an ongoing RPA technology capability (a small team of support people).
I were implementing it, I would have an assurance / monitoring step after every transaction to validate it went as expected.
I’ve worked at a (non-health) place that had a large’ish scale RPA implementation (5 dedicated servers sending through transactions) and it was brilliant when implemented but 4 years later people were cursing it for sporadically breaking and hindering change to source and destination systems, with very low numbers of people who knew how it worked.
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Good points @david.vink, I worry more than a little about the use in referrals in particular. Interesting.
Too right. RPA is a temporary ‘band-aid’ type solution for when you can’t fix the root problem (usually due to lock-in with an unhelpful vendor).
We have Blue Prism at Birmingham, and it finds occasional niche uses. Helpful to have in the toolbag, but definitely not a saviour.
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If helpful, I’ve curated vendor papers around RPA use-cases in Healthcare. This is part of a wider RPA resource that I maintain. 
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Great thread!
Also, this month the NHS have launched an open RPA marketplace for sharing automations. An interesting concept that encourages a culture of sharing and openness.
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