NHS Trust saves time and money by automating admin work

The virtual workers have saved the East Suffolk and North Essex Trust more than 500 hours of time in three months

An NHS Trust is working with UK-based automation firm Thoughtonomy to cut down on the hours that staff spend on important but time-consuming data entry work.

The East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT) has been deploying virtual workers alongside humans since July, initially in five specialist clinics at Ipswich Hospital: neurology, cardiology, urology, nephrology and haematology.

The Trust uses three virtual workers to automate certain processes, such as GP referrals. It says that it has cut the time taken to process the first stage of referrals from 20 minutes to five minutes, saving more than 500 hours of medical secretaries' time in three months. Within a year of launch, ESNEFT believes that it will save as much as £220,000.

The virtual workers monitor incoming referrals from the GP Electronic Referral Service (eRS) in real-time, 24/7. They extract information from each referral - such as the reason for it, and supporting clinical information - then merge everything into a PDF document. The system then uploads this document to the Trust's administrative systems using smart card technology, and alerts the relevant consultant.

Neurologist Dr Petr Pokorny, who works at the hospital, said that the new automated system "allows for a more efficient, fluent flow of work, as it's easier to deal with five new referrals every morning rather than a huge pile of 35 referrals once a week. What's more, we now have our medical secretaries fully focused on the things that make a real difference to our staff and patients."

Darren Atkins, deputy director of ICT at ESNEFT, said: "We're delighted with the results we've realised so far and are hugely excited about the potential benefits of automating more processes across our Trust. When you look at the time and cost savings we've already banked within just one specific area of our operations, you start to get an idea of how intelligent automation can drive transformation on a huge scale within the NHS."

A report earlier this year claimed that automation could save the NHS as much as £12.5 billion a year, equivalent to about 10 per cent of its annual budget.