Reducing the risk of spreading the Covid-19 virus in healthcare

Healthcare units (hospitals, clinics) are primarily exposed to problems resulting from insufficient safeguards against COVID-19 infection because patients do not report possible contact with those infected with the coronavirus. More and more medical departments or teams are quarantined. What’s more – the multitude of variants of the virus made any suspicious symptom a potential threat. On the other hand, there are lines of patients waiting for medical help and delaying it may endanger their life and health. That is why, at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, in cooperation with our great partner – Rhenus Automation, we decided to use the power of robots to minimize the risk and help protect both patients and medical staff.

The assumption was simple: implementation of IT solutions will make hospitals come to hospitals after the initial online registration. The robot will assess the risk each time and help the hospital prepare properly.

We carried out the first implementation at one of the largest specialized hospitals in Poland, treating the most seriously ill children from all over the country. Ensuring the continuity of this facility’s work is often a matter of life or death; therefore, together with Rhenus Automation, we have made every effort to audit and implement the solution as soon as possible.

The audit revealed the most pressing problems:

• Long service time for admitting a new patient (preparation of documentation, filling out forms)
• Long waiting for registration in the emergency room
• The insufficient daily limit for accepting new patients
• Risk of contamination of staff and patients during the lengthy registration process
• Hospital-patient information flow problems

In the automation phase we:

• Very quickly developed a methodology for the automation of existing systems
• Carried out rigorous tests of automation solutions
• Measured the parameters of the solution according to the specific client’s needs
• Prepared training for hospital registration staff who ensure the correctness of the process

The role of software robots in supporting hospitals:

The robot registers patients in the hospital system verify data, and reduce personal contact between people to a minimum. Before being admitted to the ward, patients are required to, e.g. fill in the e-form beforehand. It is then verified by a robot and the data, after being checked, are transferred to the hospital system. The implementation of the automatic registration process, extended by pre-selection questions regarding possible contact with the virus, significantly facilitates the decisions about the procedure to be used in the patient’s case. 

The result

The online robot-supervised patient registration system reduced the waiting time in the emergency room to a minimum.

Working 24 hours a day, he continuously registers patients in the hospital system (HIS), thus saving the time of “human” hospital staff. Verification of the correctness of the collected data by the robot eliminates the risk of error.