Table of Contents
- Summary
- Challenge
- Solution
- Results
- Lessons Learned
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Summary
Hospitals pipe oxygen into wards and theaters. But, the onset of the COVID-19 global respiratory pandemic in 2020 placed increased pressure on the management of this essential element to life. Monitoring and managing stored oxygen was a manual process in many hospitals, so with governments worldwide ordering a lockdown of all but essential workers, hospitals sought ways to reduce the number of non-clinical staff on site.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enabled Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust (the Trust) in the UK to monitor and manage its critical oxygen tanks 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and to do it remotely.
Oxygen Bot, an RPA solution developed for the facilities management team, provided regular and accurate processing of oxygen storage at the hospital. The Trust demonstrated that RPA could reduce manual tasks and provide a safer and more efficient process for healthcare. Health service providers in the UK need solutions like this urgently because the country has the highest COVID-19 death rate in Europe.
In summary, the organization achieved the following benefits from its RPA deployment:
- Health and safety improvement through automatic measurement of storage tanks
- Accurate data collection
- Reduction in process steps
- Greater integration between facilities, IT, and clinical teams