Talent Management

NHS adopts Blue Prism’s Cloud-Based Digital Workforce

May 20, 2020

With the NHS at the sharp end of COVID-19, Blue Prism Cloud’s SaaS-based intelligent automation platform is enabling a fast-growing number of NHS Trusts to swiftly adapt to unprecedented operational demand. The injection of AI-powered Digital Workers into the NHS resource pool allows a wide range of activities to be automated across functions in order to release more time to care for frontline NHS staff.

Over recent weeks, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay, North East London Commissioning Support Unit, Great Western Hospitals and Leeds Teaching Hospitals have adopted the Blue Prism Cloud platform. Not only will this assist in fighting the crisis but importantly provide the foundation for delivering sustainable long-term transformation that accelerates delivery of better patient outcomes.

In 1948 Aneurin Bevan, Welsh MP and Health Minister, saw his pioneering vision for a National Health Service come into being. Now the healthcare board named in his honour is at the forefront of shaping the future of healthcare by embedding pioneering technology into its operations. “There are huge gains to be made in terms of incorporating intelligent automation into healthcare processes. For us the imperative is patient safety and experience,” said Mike Ogonovsky, Assistant Director of Informatics at Aneurin Bevan Health Board. The manual transfer of data between the systems used to manage the patient journey through primary care, ambulance service, secondary care and back into community care brings with it the risk of error and delay. It also takes valuable time out of the day for highly trained staff who should be focused on caring for patients. We see an opportunity to overcome this challenge using Blue Prism Cloud’s Digital Workforce and are taking the first steps to re-shape our processes so that we can continue to move the bar for quality of patient care ever higher.”

The positive impact automation can have on patient outcomes is also recognised by University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay. “We have run small, successful RPA projects over the past four years but now it’s time for us to scale the benefits of this technology. The Blue Prism Cloud platform will help us accelerate our plans and make it easier for us to expand the range of functions we support rapidly,” said Marc Hadwin, Head of Digital Services at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay. “The goal of improving patient experience sits at the forefront of our strategic initiative to apply intelligent automation into our overall operating model. For example, employing Digital Workers to help patients book, prepare for and follow up appointments can ensure everyone receives a wealth of tailored communications, confirming each step of their treatment. With 600,000 hospital appointments booked a year, there is no way our staff could proactively manage that level of personalised communication manually. For medical staff too, we see countless opportunities for removing the daily burden of updating patient record systems so that they can dedicate their time to providing frontline patient care.”

The Trusts join a community of healthcare organizations who are sharing their tried and tested automations using a dedicated Blue Prism Cloud NHS Digital Exchange that allows NHS teams to further accelerate the deployment of new automations.

A library of pre-built automation assets that cover more than 40 processes tackling enhanced access to services, and patient communication from admissions through to outpatient support are being made available. Automations enabling key back office support for recruitment, HR onboarding, and finance processing are also on hand through the NHS DX. Without the need for each Trust to start designing and building automations from scratch, teams can expand the impact of their Digital Workforce faster than ever. As each Trust contributes new assets into the fast-growing library of automations, the benefit of this technology is multiplied across the country and delivering optimal results on public sector investment.

Blue Prism Aiding in Fast Response to COVID-19 Across the UK
More than 50 Trusts across the UK have recruited Blue Prism Digital Workers to help drive sustainable transformation over the past four years. Through Blue Prism’s COVID-19 Response Program, the company has leveraged its wealth of knowledge in this sector together with the flexibility of the Blue Prism Cloud platform to put Digital Workers into production at speed in the fight against COVID-19.

Here are some examples of work currently being performed by our Digital Workers as part of this effort.

Respiratory data sharing that supports identifying cases and moving data across London.
Connecting patient administration systems across health systems to improve access to psychological therapies.
Automating administrative tasks across the back office to ensure hospitals can offer the most efficient care possible.
Adapting to an overwhelming rise in requests for eConsultations for a cross regional general practice partnership that services hundreds of thousands of citizens. By automating a new GP appointment booking process, the practice has reduced the risk of COVID-19 transmission and maintained a safe environment for all patients and staff associated with the practice.
Collecting and uploading data to update a central COVID-tracking dashboard across UK prisons to help healthcare workers monitor and administer patients in the prison system.
Providing a complex automation to give 800 care homes access to NHS Mail to accelerate patient referrals from care homes into hospitals.
Accelerating the on-boarding of NHS staff through automating the complex process of creating new starter accounts and attributing staff to the relevant roles.

Terry Walby, CEO and Founder of Blue Prism Cloud added, “this global crisis has pushed us all to re-evaluate what operational agility entails and how critical it is to be responsive to change on a scale we haven’t seen before. The dynamic scaling capacity that cloud offers, coupled with the resource flexibility of a Digital Workforce, allows organizations to target sudden challenges faster than ever. We are immensely proud to be supporting the NHS and helping them in overcoming these significant challenges.”