The healthcare landscape is currently experiencing a rapid period of transformation. For years, we’ve seen evolutions in artificial intelligence, 5G, and wearables bringing new opportunities to life for patient care and disease management.

Medical devices have grown increasingly more efficient, while team members in the wider healthcare environment have discovered new opportunities for efficient collaboration on a global scale. Of course, like in any industry, transformation comes with a number of new journeys to understand, map, and implement. To enable true innovation and growth, today’s medical innovators need a new way to enhance their everyday processes.

Journey automation, a subset of the automation landscape, has the power to instantly enhance any healthcare environment. Capable of upgrading a range of critical processes for health teams, administrators, and researchers, automation could change the future of health forever.

For decades, the healthcare industry has been one of the most labour-intensive spaces, with high demands for time, talent, and innovation. As this landscape continues to evolve, part of building a better quality of care for the next generation, involves making the healthcare industry more streamlined, agile, and empowered.

“Automation” in its many forms has already emerged as one of the most valuable tools for the future of digital transformation in any industry. Considered by experts like Gartner and Forrester to be an essential technology for today’s professionals, automation supplements, enhances and supports the skilled people who keep organizations running.

Used correctly, the power of automation isn’t just reserved for enterprise environments and fast-paced business landscapes. It’s also an incredible tool for the healthcare space. Automation in healthcare could help to speed up time-intensive processes that hold teams back and prevent treatments and care from being offered as quickly as possible.

Automation also has the potential to change the way we invest in things like extensive research and data recovery for the discovery of new treatments. Already, around 50% of healthcare providers surveyed by Gartner say they’re planning on investing in robotic process automation (RPA) in the near future, following the chaos of the pandemic.

Due to an innate ability to reduce costs, improve efficiency and increase revenue, automation is going to be a powerful feature of future healthcare operations according to most industry leaders. Already, innovators are experimenting with the idea of contact centre and help desk automation, revenue cycle operations, and supply chain management automation.

Of course, the first step is finding the right automation technology to enable the journeys healthcare brands will be investing in for the future of digital transformation. SOFTEL Journey Automation is a plug-and-play solution created to enhance the automation of essential journeys in healthcare workflows. The technology, built with leading solutions like Microsoft Q&A Maker and Microsoft Luis on an Azure architecture supports companies in transformation efforts.

With Journey Automation from SOFTEL, companies can access automation workflows, bots, and intelligent tools capable of keeping healthcare companies on track as they pursue a range of crucial use cases. AI automation improves knowledge sharing, transforms the way teams work together, and even paves the way for quicker technology migration.

Just some of the use cases for journey automation in healthcare include:

Medicare patient processes:

Medicare patient processes take up a lot of time in the healthcare environment for US groups. There are a number of important pieces of documentation and data processing to consider on a daily basis, often taking up huge amounts of administrator time.

With Journey Automation technology, it’s possible to minimize the amount of work teams need to do to remain compliant. The automation system can automatically deliver important documents into the right systems, while tracking and offering notifications on which Medicare documents have already been submitted and approved. This allows for the administrative side of insurance handling to be managed much more smoothly.

Provider billing processes

Similar to insurance technology management, provider billing processes require a significant amount of professional time and input on a regular basis. With Journey Automation solutions, it’s possible to create automated journeys which allow administrators to access important information from an AI Q&A bot on how to bill for certain procedures.

Once a bill has been accurately created, workflows can be developed to issue that bill to the financial team for approval, and then send the invoice through to the correct recipient. SOFTEL’s Journey automation tracking and reporting system can help to manage and track the billing workflow from start to finish.

Health authority legal processes

Compliance is a critical consideration for any business, but the standards are particularly high in the healthcare industry. The Journey Automation system from SOFTEL can assist with ensuring compliance remains high throughout the entire workforce. It’s possible to provide training and learning aids for new members of staff, to guide them through best practices regarding legal processes and how to manage patient data.

Building customized journeys within the Automation system also ensures companies can set up end-to-end workflows for compliant data management, approvals, and the storage or use of data. This is ideal for minimizing the risk associated with backend information in healthcare.

Patient advisory processes

Automation is rapidly emerging as potentially valuable tool for the management of patient interactions on a massive scale. Not only can automation help with things like contact centre support, but it can also be a valuable tool for guiding surgeons, specialists, and other healthcare professionals in the delivery of care.

Journey Automation tools can also be offered as a self-service solution for patients who need to seek out assistance with everything from health-related questions to guidance on solving problems they have with their health provider. A tool like SOFTEL Journey automation could even connect patients to knowledge bases where they can find answers to questions without human intervention.

Patient referral processes

As the healthcare environment becomes more distributed, powered by the evolution of remote and hybrid working, as well as telemedicine, patient referral processes can seem increasingly complex. Fortunately, a solution like the Journey Automation solution offered by SOFTEL can offer step-by-step guidance to medical professionals hoping to refer their patient to a connected specialist, anywhere in the world.

Built into the Microsoft Teams ecosystem, medical professionals can access a bot that offers advice on how to send compliant referrals through a medical system, and even track the potential responses of any specialists contacted.

Supply chain management

Medical companies and the healthcare industry often struggle with a number of supply chain issues, which starts with poor communication and data management between the healthcare business and the manufacturer or supplier. The use of automated journeys within the supply chain can help professionals in the field to issue requests for supplies in a more manageable, straightforward, and easy-to-track format.

With Journey Automation, it’s possible to ensure teams have the tools quickly and conveniently they need to issue standardized requests for equipment. Plus, the technology ensures you can check your team is remaining compliant with any internal and federal policies in place.

Upgrading or introducing new technology

As healthcare companies from all backgrounds continue to digitally transform, it’s likely a wider number of medical professionals, insurance management teams, and surgical groups will need to learn how to use a variety of different tools and software. The use of new technology in the healthcare industry can mean incredible things for employee productivity, and patient care. However, the right training is necessary to ensure teams can leverage these tools.

SOFTEL journey automation software offers step-by-step customized training journeys for people from all healthcare backgrounds. Healthcare leaders can build automated training plans for each member of the team, with personalized content delivered by an AI bot. This makes it quicker and simpler to roll out new technology, without extensive downtime.

HR Management

Many areas of the healthcare landscape are defined by a constant, and ever-growing demand for new talent and skills. Unfortunately, the process of onboarding new team members can be extremely time-consuming, and problematic. In this environment, it’s important to find ways of welcoming new people to the team, without causing problems in team efficiency.

With the Journey Automation platform from SOFTEL, business leaders can implement complete end-to-end onboarding journeys designed to guide employees through everything they need to know. It’s possible to build fully personalized onboarding processes for different roles, complete with access to FAQ information and AI Q&A support.

As the transformation of the healthcare industry continues at an incredible rate, the demand for automation will only continue. Designed to empower and supplement the employees in the healthcare landscape today, Journey Automation from SOFTEL can bring new life to your organization. With a comprehensive journey automation platform built into your Microsoft Teams application, there’s no limit to your opportunities for improving productivity and patient care.

With SOFTEL Journey automation, you can:

• Simplify everyday journeys in the healthcare space through MS Teams
• Integrate extensive training and learning packages for staff
• Support your employees in completing repetitive tasks at speed
• Deliver support for employees experimenting with new technology
• Access AI insights and business intelligence to track team transformation
• Provide employees with the information they need to stay productive.

Discover SOFTEL Journey Automation can benefit your healthcare company today.