How Robotic Process Automation is helping the World amid Corona
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a piece of tech that enables you to configure a certain software, or robot to imitate the works of human beings.
This is done within an advanced system which is built to execute a certain business activities. The robots use the user interface in the data capture process, and the inteprete the information as a human being would do, or even better.
This RPA system also deduces, activates, and passes information to the other related systems, which allows it do a lot of tasks repetitively.
In essence, the never get exhausted or dizzy, and hardly ever make mistakes like human beings.
As opposed to the majority of the other IT solutions, RPA helps organizations work automatically at fractions of both time and costs never experienced before.
It also takes advantage of the existing infrastructure without disrupting existing systems. That makes it an economical replacement for your premise. This is because RPA robots are naturally non-intrusive.
Another advantage to the automation caused by RPA robots is its cost efficiency and compliance. You forget about the costs of operation.
Robots can do tasks such as logging into applications, moving both files, documents and folders, copying as well as pasting data.
They are also good at extracting both structures and semi-structured information from documents, scraping browsers, filling forms, among many other tasks.
Robots are able to imitate human beings in almost all the things they do, if not all.
An Israeli Hospital Installs RPA in 48 hours Amid Corona.
Maccabi, is one of the biggest non-profit health care organizations (HMOs) in Israel comprising of over 2.4 million members. The facility is at the forefront of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in its country.
The Ministry of Health is usually supplied with detailed files carrying trusted test results of Maccabi patients twice per day. The manual uploading of the documents was yielding week-long task accumulations and numerous mistakes as a result of human errors.
Led by Maccabi's CIO, Kryon an RPA firm, succeeded in automating this process within a period of 48 hours speeding up operations a great deal. The fast upload of critical and subtle information is now continues with high accuracy, eradicating the chances for human errors that were very common during manual upload times.
"Robotic process automation is not just about the future of work and creating scalable businesses. It's also a beacon of hope for healthcare institutions all over the world as this pandemic strains an already overtaxed system," said Harel Tayeb, CEO of Kryon.
"Healthcare specialists are endangering their lives when trying to help save ours. It is our responsibility to help overcome this pandemic. Creating processes that ensure every test, chart, and patient status is shared between testing centers is a significant step in rationalizing their efforts." said Harel Tayeb.
"These are unprecedented times for Maccabi Healthcare Services and Israeli medicine. It is critical to leverage innovative technology to streamline intensive processes so we can focus on creating the best possible patient outcomes," said Ofir Kadosh, CIO, Maccabi Healthcare Services.
"Within an hour after calling Kryon on Friday morning, we amazingly had a signed agreement, and 48 hours later we had a fully automated integration with the Israeli Ministry of Health. Prior to automation, this process would have taken 1-2 months of work and several employees to accomplish. Now we can focus on the important work of testing and treating patients." adds Ofir Kadosh.
Although Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one of the most recent technologies in the world, it has been in the market for several years and has so far been embraced by many institutions.
An HR officer providing services in Europe was required to process over 2,500 sick leave certificates each month, handling each one within an average of four minutes.
When they implemented an RPA system, they were able to achieve over 90% process automation. The robots extract information from a transaction in SAP, inserts the information into the buyer's systems, and then prints it.
The HR officer providing services in Europe was able to attain a return-on-investment in a period of six months. This also led to a reduction of error rates to 0%, the manual effort required was also reduced to 5%. The processing time reduced 80%.
A worldwide retailer was validating closing information by the use of its store closing reports for each one of its registers in hundreds of stores.
The workers did it manually and everything went slowly and in a sluggish manner. Many times, he experienced a lot of delays in offering services and customers complained often.
The retailer decided to free its workers to address the matters concerning their customers, and this would only be achieved through automating the validation process.
RPA robots were then introduced to do the validation, and move the reports into one server. They then read and combine the required information for the stores' closing reports.
Another company, dealing with trade insurance and dealing with more than 50,000 clients across the world automated the process of underwriting credit limit request.
Previously, the data was manually collected from internal sources such as Risk & Policy to external sources like google news and customer site.
Through this, they redeemed over 2,440 of human work per month, and employees can use that time to effectively interact with the customers.
It is important to note that robots will still be around for a longer time. This means that the sooner you harvest their potential, the sooner you will give your struggling company an edge and enjoy a brighter tommorow.
RPA technology delivers quality and ensures profitability while improving the rate of accuracy in both industries and organizations.
Apart from transforming and streamlining workflow in your organization, RPA will also enable superiority in both flexibility and scalability in your workplace. Robots will also add speed to your tailored responses to certain needs.
Besides being very easy to train, RPA robots seamlessly integrate into any system. They also give a constant report on their progress, and this enables you to advance in operations and predictions, as you strategize to improve.
What to Expect in an RPA system.
Expect the following if you start using this technology;
i. Better accuracy
Robotic Process Automation software robots have high consistency and compliance. They hardly ever make mistakes or get exhausted. They are programmed to simply follow the given rules.
ii. Improved compliance
When given instructions, robots will reliably execute the instructions, hence reducing risks. You will have full control in everything they do, according to the standards and regulations. This is because everything the RPA system does is monitored.
iii. More cost savings
In less than a year, you will recorda positive return on investment. This is because RPA can reduce the cost of production by up to 80%, and increase the accumulative cost reductions up to 20%.
iv. Super scalability
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) performs massive amounts of tasks and can be deployed quickly with minimal cost relative to the working flux in the workplace.
v. High productivity and speed
The first people to recognize the advantages of RPA system are your employees. This is because it will wipe out all the extra tasks and relieve them from job pressure due to heavy workload.
The Role of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in COVID-19 Fight.
The fight against COVID-19 comprises regulations such as social distance, high hygiene, banning of social gatherings, partial lockdown, and total lockdown in some parts of the world.
People are required to work from home. And this is challenging especially in instances where the company isn't advanced enough to have their workers operate from home effectively.
These companies are desperately searching for ways to get accurate and quick services to continue operating normally during the lockdown. And right now is time for such institutions to implement a robotic process automation program.
As hinted above, the RPA will not only help in service provision during the lockdown but also increase the productivity of the institution. The robots will provide a reliable and consistent services.
One of the institutions that need Robotic Process Automation is the medical sector. This ranges from hospitals to health care provision stations and any other institution dealing with COVID-19 patients.
These are the ways in which RPA is going to help the world fight against the COVID-19 pandemic:
a) Reducing wait times at drive-up COVID-19 testing sites.
The testing sites have been facing high demand and long lines in some countries, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) working towards establishing more organizations like pharmacies to be used as COVID-19 testing sites in the United States (U.S.)
These long lines and the long waiting periods have forced people to wait for results in their cars. This is because the testing must be done with social distancing and proper hygiene in mind.
There is also a lot of work to be done in the testing site, including validating whether the tested person is a new or existing patient.
The workers in the COVID-19 testing center have to also register the tested person into the electronic medical records (EMRs) system. The patient's test label is then sent to a remote printer in the testing site.
This, coupled with a high need for testing, has led to over six-hour waiting times in different testing sites. This manual procedure makes the process very slow and characterized by many mistakes out of human error.
The Cleveland Clinic in the United States created and installed a UiPath robot within a period of 48 hours to help solve the problem.
The UiPath robot confirms if a patient is new or has been there before, and then registers him/ her in the Epic electronic medical records (EMRs) system. It also sends the results to the right printer. It does all these things in just fifteen seconds.
RPA robots save around ten minutes per patient, eliminating human errors, as well as accelerating the COVID-19 test process.
b) Automating COVID-19 test result reporting.
Hospital backlogs have been a pain in the neck even before the COVID-19 pandemic. The biggest issue now, however, is that hundreds of thousands of people get tested daily for COVID-19 across the globe.
Tedious administrative work in the COVID-19 test sites requires more time to be done. This leads to a struggle with increased backlogs in our labs, making the test backlogs more than just a normal issue.
A similar case of the sluggish testing process was experienced in Duplin, Ireland in The Mater Misericordiae University Hospital (Mater Hospital) where COVID-19 test results had to be recorded in different systems.
The process lasted over three hours every day, after which it wZ then reported to the Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) department.
Such delays continue in many places across the world. And that's because we use outdated systems to accomplish office tasks.
For the case of Mater Hospital, the systems were developed over fifteen years ago, when the country faced a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) 2003 outbreak.
In every test, the health care personnel had to log into a lobotomy system, obtain disease codes, log into a new data platform, and finally enter the results obtained manually into the net data platform.
This process saved a nurse over two hours each week. As a result, The hospital started using both UiPath and RPA robots to automatically generate and report COVID-19 test results.
The robots do the logging into the lobotomy system, obtaining disease codes, logging into a new data platform, and finally entering the results obtained into the net data platform.
Through this, the hospital has managed to save more than three working hours, which it now spends attending to patients. The RPA robots are saving time, improving employees' experience, and accelerating operational efficiency.
c) Accelerating recruiting of new health care workers.
In some countries such as the United States of America and the United Kingdom, all the retired health care officers such as doctors and nurses, were requested to volunteer in assisting the fight against COVID-19.
"To address the coming healthcare workers shortage, states from Hawaii to New Hampshire are loosening their licensing rules." wrote Selena Simmons-Duffin, health policy reporter at National Public Radio (NPR).
"This is to give those with clinical skills the ability to pitch in, such as allowing out-of-state physicians to practice right away, asking retired physicians to volunteer, and more," added Selena Simmons-Duffin.
Before the volunteers can join healthcare teams on the fight against COVID-19, some preliminary checks such as criminal, background, and credential verification must be done.
Human Resource (HR) teams have to process all this information from the tens of thousands of health workers who've volunteered. This is tedious and time-consuming as well.
A government agency using UiPath robots in running the background checks will have an easier time. The robots will be uploading data from other applications into the HR systems.
They will also inform the necessary departments whenever a health worker volunteer is ready to be absorbed into the system. And after that, they can help in assigning the volunteers different job areas based on their needs.
The RPA robots have decreased average volunteer processing time from around 5 days to a number of hours, in most cases less than 5 hours.
They have also increased the hiring speed and reduced manual data input process by over 35%. Through this, more staff members are free to concentrate on the other procedures of the hiring process.
d) Analyzing the received COVID-19 data form all over the world.
It is could be easier to get health survey information from workers in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The opposite is true when trying to analyze the information related to COVID-19 from each part of the world.
This is being done by a specialized global healthcare agency. It is working all hours to collect COVID-19 related data, consolidate it, and give the updates in good time.
If you have tried following the COVID-19 statistics in your community, you are aware that it is a difficult task because accuracy is a problem. This agency is analyzing information coming from over 50 countries in numerous languages.
The agency had to set up a data filtering system and deploy UiPath robots to process incoming information from various parts of the world. The robots scrape data from different systems and then consolidate it in a single source.
Through the RPA robots, the agency has standardized the information, improved accuracy, reduced errors, and faster processing of the data.
e) Enabling the procurement department to manage the inflow of orders.
Many hospitals and healthcare institutions are purchasing an influx of medical supplies. This is due to the high demand for the supplies required to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The procurement offices in the hospitals are accountable for the purchase and inventory of supplies. The high influx of materials required is obviously putting a strain on the procurement officers.
In response, the procurement department at a major hospital in Canada is dealing with medical supply capacities of almost twenty times more than their normal requirements.
This is causes frequent purchase delays and backlogs in the delivery of medical supplies in the hospital.
The hospital is now in the process of deploying UiPath robots to stabilize orders and inventory in a good time. The automation process will ensure the timely delivery of the demanded medical supplies and relieve the procurement officers from the strain.
Through the RPA robots, the hospital has reduced backlogs in purchases, improved inventory management, accuracy and speed of the delivery of urgent medical supplies
The Verdict
With the ongoing changes in the way of living, you can be sure that many organizations will begin to re-think their technology platforms, strategic plans, Work-From-Home (WFH) policies, Business Continuity Planning (BCP), and more if the current situation persists.
Any changes to be made will demand not just an economic investment alone, but also a human labor investment. The individuals who have been doing the routine and repeatable tasks will now emphasis on additional value-adding activities leaving software bots to do the mundane activities.
The RPA robots will help in both automating and accelerating viable processes such as data entry to worksheets, collection of social media data, saving attachments, filling forms, and opening emails, as your staff members focus on other activities.
When the robots are doing mundane tasks, the workers can work on re-establishing customer bases, minimizing expenses, improving the institution's revenues, and enhancing the quality of information produced.
Because everyone is unaware of the period this new normalcy might take, each one is concerned about making some adjustments that will favor and their business. The adjustments include times schedule and frames, repeatable tasks, rule-based tasks, among other things that should not to limit your performance.
This edge can be easily achieved through Robotic Process Automation (RPA) which can help both you and your team perform better by dedicating much of your time to the urgent needs.
You must embrace the common-sense precautions in protecting both your workers, yourself and your business from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Find the tools and the techniques you need to communicate, collaborate, and work with your team from anywhere. And an excellent place to begin is Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
This will also save the workers in the healthcare sector more time to deal with the patients as the world fights with COVID-19.
Finally,
It is very important to note that workers are still very important to the institution because the RPA robots will only be taking on mundane tasks. The employees will still accomplish the most important and urgent tasks in the workplace.
In the health sector, it is very important to note that the heroes are the people at the front line in the fight against COVID-19, which are the doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel in our hospitals. This is the same in every other institution that leverages the use the Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
It would be wrong to conclude or think that robotstake the credit for any achievement because they are the result of our thoughts.
The doctors and nurses dealing with the patients, as well as all the workers handling customer demands and requirements are the true heroes in the workplace.
For that reason, it is very important to recognize the true heroes and their role amid the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) anxiety.