Virtual workers predicted to save FT £2.1m in first year

Working with artificial intelligence platform Thoughtonomy, East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation Trust has developed robotic process automation — otherwise known as virtual workers — to help support admin staff with repetitive tasks, including the e-referrals process.

It is expected the automation process will help prevent 13,000 missed outpatient appointments from going to waste and save £2.1m within its first year of use.

The virtual workers monitor incoming referrals at Ipswich Hospital, then process them in real time before sending them over to a consultant for triaging.

Previously, this process required the work of a medical secretary, who would take up to 20 minutes to process each of the referrals, which were then passed on to consultants in bulk on Fridays.

The virtual workers can process the e-referrals in five minutes and have saved the trust £220,000 in associated direct costs.

The automation of e-referrals as well as other processes — such as invoices and the creation of diagnostic cardio respiratory tests — has saved ESNEFT’s corporate clinical workforce 27,000 hours over the past 16 months.

Speaking at the King’s Fund Annual Conference in London on Wednesday, ESNEFT chief technology officer Darren Atkins said his ultimate goal is to save 100,000 hours of staff time.

He said: “Our neurology referrals are being triaged as close to real time as possible.

“I’ve seen referrals come through late on a Friday night from a GP that are then picked up by a consultant on a Saturday morning, triaged and graded and moved on to the next stage.”

ESNEFT is also expecting to save £2.1m in one year after developing virtual workers to monitor Colchester Hospital’s text message reminder service for cancelled appointments.

Previously, a clinician was not notified of a cancellation if a patient replied to the text reminder service to say they would not be attending the appointment, costing the trust up to £160 per missed appointment.

Now the virtual workers monitor the text messaging service and cancel appointments automatically in the patient record system before adding another patient to the free slot.

Mr Atkins said: “That process has great benefits — if I take the figure that the trust puts out of £160 per missed outpatient appointment — in the first year alone that should produce around 13,000 in Colchester and that will stop us wasting £2.1m a year.”

These automations are part of the NHS Marketplace — a joint venture between ESNEFT and Thoughtonomy which gives trusts access to automations that have been built and successfully deployed across other organisations.

The platform includes automations that have been customised to access common NHS IT systems, including System C Medway, Kainos Evolve, Electronic Referral System, Lorenzo and ESR, System One and EMIS Web.

A total of 30 NHS trusts are expected to be signed up to the marketplace by March next year, according to Mr Atkins.