AI and robots improve efficiency at home and community care provider

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth 

Home and community care provider, New Zealand Health Group (NZHG), has introduced AI technology and robots into its workflow systems, automating resource-heavy manual tasks and improving operational efficiency.

NZHG has around 10,000 support workers, nurses and other health professionals across the country delivering vital healthcare services to tens of thousands of Kiwis every day.

Chief digital officer Peter Radich says NZHG support workers submit a survey at the end of every visit, which includes check boxes and a free text section for any new information under a concept called ‘stop and watch’.

Around 600 text-based notes are received every day and range from notes about a significant health concern, to social updates about a client, such as they have a new pet.

This shared inbox had to be monitored manually, employing 1.5 FTE to read and sort them.

“Now the AI interrogates the emails and categorises the information,” Radich says.

“If it is a note just ‘for information’ it is pushed straight into the CMS. If it is anything health related, it goes to one of our nurses to do the ‘stop and watch’ follow up.”

Radich says the Generative AI tool is highly accurate and scans every note without fail, and the impact has extended beyond efficiency.

“This allows people to focus on other tasks, doing more valuable jobs,” he says.

NZHG is also looking at piloting an AI-powered scribe for clinical staff.

The generative AI tool will ‘listen’ to the conversation between the clinician and client and generate the notes for them to review.

The AI will also populate the template for Health NZ web-based assessments as well as the NZHG systems. 

Radich says this could potentially save hours a day for an individual, and trial of using AI for transcription resulted in a 50 percent reduction in time spent on clinical notes.

Another application in recruitment is using AI to check CVs against job requirements, such as visa requirements and location, and to automate police checks.

“The ability to review all of those using AI is going to be a huge productivity gain for the HR team,” says Radich.

Last year, NZHG introduced automated scheduling assistant robots across their two largest businesses.

The robots, called Piki and Rowi, were originally launched to support Geneva Healthcare and HealthCare NZ with roster changes for support workers, helping to reassign jobs every day when support workers were sick or otherwise unable to make it to work.

Staff use their organisation’s app to indicate that they cannot work a shift, and Rowi and Piki will begin the search for the most suitable replacement support workers utilising a complex data analytics algorithm.

Piki and Rowi have now been extended to support nursing rosters, and going forward they will be used for unplanned leave rostering.

Radich says the goal is to get to 35 percent of all jobs being reassigned using Piki and Rowi by the end of June and use of the robots is now business as usual.

The robots are also being used to process ACC and hospital referrals automatically.

“We are always looking at what is manual that we can automate,” he explains.

Image: New Zealand Health Group chief digital officer Peter Radich

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