It is often while IT administrators and end users are performing routine administration tasks that we lose the most productivity and find the greatest potential for human error. These resources are specialists and their time would be better spent fully engaged with their primary skillset.
Maximising productivity and automating tasks is not a new concept; IT teams have been creating scripts for specific tasks since the origins of business IT systems. However, scripting is generally IT focused and can quickly become complicated or constrained. Fortunately, technologies have emerged specifically focused on the automation of user tasks, referred to as Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
There are several excellent examples of RPA solutions on the market, including Blue Prism, UiPath Platform and IBM Robotic Process Automation, to name but a few. The applicability and need for these products is now being recognised by NHS Trusts around the country. The problem is that building a business case to justify the investment can be very difficult given the tens of thousands these solutions cost.
Fortunately, there is a significantly cheaper alternative based on Microsoft’s Power Platform. You may already be familiar with the Power Automate Desktop (PAD) tool that ships free as part of modern Enterprise Windows desktops. PAD has the capability to interact with all your systems and thus enable the same complex automation solutions you would expect from the “Magic Quadrant” RPA solutions above.
Office 365 customers can extend this functionality to run unattended on local server groups using the unattended license upgrade for less than £400 per year.
BDS have recently used this PAD RPA to support Blackpool Teaching Hospitals to overcome a challenge with patients checking in via a modern touch screen front-end system and being marked as arrived on the Patient Administration System (PAS).
With no direct integration available between the systems, NHS administrative staff would have to manually update the patients booking directly on the PAS systems via a terminal emulator interface, costing several FTE per year. Instead, the RPA solution gathers the check-ins from the system’s SQL database and performs the steps on the PAS on behalf of the users. Details are logged in a SharePoint list, and any issues are notified to the administrative users via email and Teams chat.
For more information about the potential of RPA, Power Platform or Office 365, please contact BDS Solutions.