In 2021, intelligent automation is everywhere, and the healthcare industry is no exception. Though automation presents many exciting new possibilities for health systems, such as streamlining clinical processes and improving patient care communications, professionals have more questions than answers about its impact on their day-to-day.

At Reimagining the Patient Experience With Intelligent Automation on July 27th, our expert panel offered their perspective on automation’s role in the future of healthcare and ways their organizations have improved transparency and interoperability with new technology.

Here’s a taste of what we learned:

1. Human connection isn’t going anywhere

Joan Cox of Steward Health Care System staunchly believes that the future hospital workforce will be a combination of AI and human workers. “If we really do the work of listening to our patients… and seeing our patients as our true north, I think it will be an absolute combination of automation, of AI, but always with that human engagement and interaction at the center of it,” she asserted.

Rather than seeing technology as competition to human workers, healthcare networks can leverage new innovation to supplement and enhance the connections they’re fostering with their patients.

2. Digital workers ensure a higher level of security

Some patients might be apprehensive about entrusting robots with confidential information, but Anna Twomey of Blue Prism, asserted that data is safer this way.

“Now we have audit logs, we know where the bots have been, what data has been moved by then, where it has been moved,” she said. Previously, when humans interacted with data, there was no paper trail to hold workers accountable when incidents occured.

3. Embedded technology creates the best patient experience

“I do not want users to have to perceive and experience technology as itself,” said Dr. Yauheni Solad of Yale New Haven Health System.

Ideally, health systems services of the future will be so well embedded into leading technology platforms that patients can’t distinguish between digital and human workers. This way, digital workers can focus on repetitive, tedious tasks while human workers work on higher level initiatives.

4. Digital workers can serve as an “interoperability intermediary

One problem that many hospitals are trying to solve is creating a “single source of truth” by achieving widespread exchange and use of information. A.J. Hanna of SYKES, believes the road to interoperability in healthcare is a long one.

However, he shared that digital workers can help “try to close some of those gaps and create some of those bridges and links that don’t naturally exist within the health system today.” SYKES has been experimenting with using RPA to create a more ingrained ease of use for their patients.

5. Telehealth doesn’t hinder patient experience, it improves it

Currently, Telehealth use is about 38 times what it was pre-COVID [1]. While many physicians were initially worried that e-visits would diminish their connection with patients, the opposite was true.

Patients found that they were getting more attention than before. “For the first time, some of these patients had eye contact [with their doctors,” said Joan Cox, expressing her shock at the positive impact technology had on patient/provider relationships.

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