Transforming Healthcare Operations with Automation

By 2030, one in four Singaporeans will be aged 65 and above , up from one in six today. To cope, 24,000 more nurses, allied health professionals, and support care staff will be needed by then. As it stands, the increased workload of healthcare workers has already taken a toll on the healthcare system and its workforce.

When Alvin Ang first joined Vanguard Healthcare in April 2023 as its Head of IT, he observed that this growing pressure and responsibility led staff to put in extra hours at work on monotonous, paperwork-heavy tasks.

Ang, who has more than 14 years of experience in the digital transformation industry, saw that adopting automation could alleviate and streamline some of the organization’s manual paperwork processes. After conducting thorough research on various business automation solutions, Vanguard Healthcare appointed UiPath as its partner. The platform helped automate and code bots that would assist its staff on a day-to-day basis.

Addressing Pain Points to Improve Productivity

Many departments at Vanguard Healthcare like Human Resources (HR), Procurement, and Finance had to spend additional hours at work on repetitive and tedious tasks such as administrative paperwork and clearing email threads.

One such task was to process and input overtime work claim forms in the HR department. Processing these forms was not only time-consuming and tedious but also a waste of manpower. It was also prone to human error as the forms passed through many hands – from manual compilation through emails to data entry on Microsoft Excel and then on the organization’s internal database.

Now, the process is fully automated using a bot. “All of the heavy lifting and general processing is done by the bot,” said Ang. The processing time for each batch of data has been slashed from four hours to just a few minutes. “This frees up the HR administrator’s time to focus on higher-value tasks,” he added.

The five-month project, which was Ang’s first since he joined Vanguard Healthcare, was highly successful. The next project was to improve processes in the Finance department. From October to December 2023, Vanguard Healthcare worked with UiPath to create a bot that would improve the accuracy of the invoice printing process.

Certain invoices require different lines of text. For example, with the increase in goods and services tax (GST) in 2024, invoices that are slated to be issued in 2024 will require a line explaining its addition in the form, Ang explained. However, the addition of extra text may disrupt the form’s formatting and cause the pages on the invoice form to be misaligned and therefore distorted.

A common error was invoice information running onto the next piece of paper instead of being printed on the back of the paper. The bot would be able to mitigate these potential errors. The Finance department would also no longer have to manually check the invoices, freeing up time for higher-value tasks.

Both bots have since been deployed and are now a part of the day-to-day operations at Vanguard Healthcare. The implementation has been so successful that its employees are asking for more bots to resolve pain points and streamline mundane processes in their workflow, Ang said.

Round-the-clock Availability

As a healthcare organization, Vanguard Healthcare’s nursing home operations run 24/7. At the same time, its daytime senior care centers also serve a wide range of clients who have their maintenance and rehabilitative services. This means patient information needs to be available 24/7 to staff.

A bot has been developed to automate the information logging processes for staff in case of system disruptions. Recently launched in February 2024, it will ensure that staff can access patient information even during downtime.

This bot is crucial to daily workflow, Ang said, calling its development a business continuity plan. “When the system is undergoing maintenance, staff can key information into an Excel spreadsheet,” he explained. “And once the system is up and going, the bot will help pull the information back into the system.”

The bot will also help identify and reduce human error. For example, duplicate entries of patient information in the system will be eliminated.

The Next Step for Healthcare

While Vanguard Healthcare is still at the beginning stage of implementing automation, it looks to scale up the number of bots by at least 15 times in 2024.

One potential solution that it would be relying on is a management tool from UiPath called the Orchestrator, which is a centralized management system that oversees and coordinates the activities of multiple bots. Just as Ang said:

Implementing an Orchestrator happens when you have a sizable number of bots within the organization.

Alvin Ang • Head of IT, Vanguard Healthcare

“Do we want staff to go through the manual process to see how the bot is doing day by day? The answer is no,” he added, citing that implementing an Orchestrator is a key priority for Vanguard Healthcare this year as it looks to roll out 40 to 50 automated bots throughout the organization.

While the organization is venturing into uncharted territory, Ang is optimistic. “Every problem is an opportunity to me. My team and I are well positioned to be the problem solvers for Vanguard Healthcare,” he said.