Robot joins Mercy Radiology’s finance team

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eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

A virtual worker called Matilda is doing all ACC invoicing and receipting for Mercy Radiology.

Healthcare Holdings head of digital health Lloyd McCann told attendees at last month’s Emerging Tech in Health conference in Christchurch that Matilda works for two hours a day doing a task that previously took two people around three to five hours a day.

He said Matilda can move data very quickly and accurately, which has led to a 10 per cent reduction in error rates for these processes.

McCann tells eHealthNews.nz that his organisation is at the very start of its journey to make use of robotic process automation.

“Matilda will do more work for us and we’ll look to build other robots to run other processes for us as well,” he says.

Mercy Radiology and Clinics has partnered with RPA specialists Virtual Blue and developed Matilda in six weeks using Blue Prism technology.

McCann says he became aware of the opportunities presented by RPA through some work and interaction with banks and a number of drivers led the organisation to look at it.

“There are a number of very repetitive tasks and processes our human teams do day in, day out, which were ripe for automation, and the reason is they are essential tasks but they don’t add much value when you think about it from a consumer perspective,” he says.

There is a lot of institutional knowledge sitting inside staff member’s heads when they do these types of tasks and there is a risk of this being lost if they leave the organisation. By automating the function, that risk is reduced significantly.

The people who previously did these tasks have had their roles expanded as they now have time to perform value-added activities.

“Now we have the human hours to have a training team, so they are working with frontline administration teams and this is helping to reduce error rates when it comes to invoicing and receipting,” McCann explains.

There is also a cash flow benefit as Matilda submits daily to ACC, whereas previously this was done weekly.

“She works on public holidays, her productivity can be increased by adding more processes and she doesn’t take sick leave!” says McCann.

As a virtual worker she also does not need a desk or any space or equipment.

McCann says Matilda will go to work next on doing invoicing and receipting for other funder organisations. Further processes “ripe for RPA” include the way the organisation transfers information between different systems, he adds.

These plans have prompted staff to ask if they will be made redundant, but McCann says the organisation is only at the start of its journey and there is a lot more value-added work that those staff could be doing.

“One of the benefits we’ve seen immediately is that people have time to perform work that adds real value for our consumers”.

The use of RPA will also allow the organisation to continue to grow without having to increase headcount to manage these essential but repetitive processes.

“This approach means we’re investing in a virtual workforce as part of our overall workforce strategy to support our continued growth,” says McCann.

See Matilda in action in this video:

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