Due to the COVID-19 situation, the strain on hospital employees has increased significantly. Therefore, it has become more important than ever to relieve healthcare staff of repetitive tasks. ZNA uses Robotic Process Automation as a solution to automate this repetitive workload.
Ziekenhuis Netwerk Antwerpen (ZNA) is the largest healthcare organization in Belgium. At ten sites, the group includes three general hospitals, seven day centres, six specialized hospitals, a psychiatric care home and a residential care centre. ZNA and its 6.300 employees stand for high-quality and accessible care.
Due to the COVID-19 situation, the strain on hospital employees has increased significantly. Therefore, it has become more important than ever to relieve healthcare staff of repetitive tasks.
ZNA noticed in particular that there was an increased workload with administrative staff due to “teleconsultations”. Following the guidelines to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, several provisions were created in Belgium for telephone advice, initially for doctors in the triage of covid-19 patients and for advice in the context of continuity of care for known patients. The processing of invoices for this type of intervention, required hundreds of hours of repetitive copypaste work across various applications, such as OAZIS, MS Outlook and MS Excel.
Robot
ZNA identified Robotic Process Automation as a solution to automate this repetitive workload. Robonext was selected as local RPA partner and technology leader UiPath was chosen as RPA platform. Robonext implemented an unattended UiPath process that is able to process teleconsultations automatically. The RPA robot fetches the data from the system used by the reception desk clerks, processes it in Excel, and then enters the data in the administrative tool OAZIS. The final result is logged in an Excel file that is sent to the Invoicing staff by e-mail.
In the words of Stig Dooms, responsible ICT business applications at ZNA: “This pilot automation demonstrates the potential of RPA for ZNA – in a short term we automated together with robonext this process that saves dozens of hours of administrative work every week. The collaboration with robonext went smooth, pleasant and effective. Currently, we are organizing interactive RPA workshops with robonext so that we have a common base to draw up a RPA roadmap for the next years.”
