Adoption of Robotics To Automate Workflow in Primary Care

Executive Summary

Overview

The adoption and implementation of robotics are fundamental in reducing the recruitment cost of competent and skilled medical professionals and hospital staff. The helpers augment traditional practices concerning remote diagnostics, surgery, and hygiene, allowing practitioners to concentrate on highly demanding duties.

The Problem/Goals/Purpose

The Problem

• Regardless of the massive investments and innovations, there are still challenges with patient safety, inefficient workflows, and poor patient outcomes (Zayas-Cabán et al., 2021).
• Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) can interact with people through verbal and non-verbal communication methods, can be disinfected, and are ideally suited for repetitive and contactless tasks, especially with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on hospital staff and patients (Getson & Nejat, 2022).
• SARs can be implemented to automate hospital workflow and keep hospital personnel and patients safe by lowering the transmission of infections, especially viruses, by eradicating or minimizing direct person-to-person contact (Getson & Nejat, 2022).
• It can also reduce the cost of hiring new staff by performing holistic functions, including remote patient care, diagnosis, and surgery.

Goals

• During and in the post-pandemic period, SARs have become highly integrated into healthcare settings, such as hospitals and private clinics, to help lower the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19, promote safety, and offer isolated patients with companionship (Getson & Nejat, 2022).
• Patients and clinicians positively perceive SARs to support therapy or treatment in the primary care setting, with older adults increasingly comfortable with various aspects of the robots and supporting their integration into future healthcare systems (Raigoso et al., 2021; Vandemeulebroucke & Gastmans, 2021).

Purpose of This Report

• In the primary care setting, workload, patient safety, inefficient workflows, and poor patient outcomes are persistent problems with potentially tragic consequences. Enhancing efficiency and seamless workflow is a priority in improving patient safety and outcomes.
• Using SARs has been illustrated to improve workflow efficiency, reduce workload and burnout, and advance primary care patient safety and treatment outcomes.

The Findings

Socially Assistive Robots

• Socially Assistive Robots have emerged as the most cost-effective alternative to skilled human labor, capable of performing remote diagnostics, surgery, hygiene, and automated health screening tracking (Getson & Nejat, 2022).
• SARs can help people with severe health conditions maintain positive social lives by encouraging social interactions (Chita-Tegmark & Scheutz).
• Caregivers and patients positively perceive SARs (Getson & Nejat, 2022).

Advantages of Socially Assistive Robots

• Interacting with people via verbal and non-verbal communication approaches and ideally suited for repetitive and contactless tasks.
• Bringing seamless workflows.
• Eliminate workloads and burnout among caregivers.
• Remote diagnostics, patient monitoring, and screening tracking.

Recommendations

Keys to Success: Adoption of SARs for Use in Care Practice

• Comparison and selection of the most suitable robot brands for use in practice from July 30, 2023.
• Sourcing for and securing the required finances from the company’s finance department should be ready by May 27, 2023.
• Gaining the necessary approvals from the CEO and the board for purchasing the robots by June 1, 2023.
• Purchase the robots by June 15, 2023.
• Arrange for instruction sessions to educate caregivers on how to use the robots by June 20, 2023.
• Start piloting and integrating the robots into the healthcare system by June 25, 2023.
• Full-scale implementation of the robotic system and its use in daily practice from July 30, 2023.
• Performing an assessment after three months to see progress.
• Involving all stakeholders for comprehensive implementation and adoption.

Special Project Report: Adoption of Robotics to Automate Workflow in Primary Care Setting

Introduction

The project will concentrate on purchasing and implementing socially assistive robots (SARs) for performing remote diagnostics, surgery, hygiene, and automated health screening tracking tasks. SARs have enormous benefits to the primary care setting and the general organizations, including eliminating the cost of hiring competent medical staff. The report discusses the different product options and investment costs for primary care providers and healthcare facilities.

Background

The healthcare sector, including the primary care setting, has experienced massive staffing shortages, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past few years, healthcare managers and leaders have recommended the introduction of robotic technology, including the development of SARs for facilitating and augmenting processes for efficient and safe care delivery (Beuscher et al., 2017). At XYZ Healthcare, the pandemic has led to significant shortages in medical practitioners and increased recruitment costs due to the constant need for new staff to attend to the bulging patient population. With the organization focused on quality and safe care, the robotic system is a perfect solution because it has successfully addressed patients’ cognitive, social, and physical needs, which are required for efficient care delivery (Bedaf et al., 2015). It is fundamental to note that a robotic system can be used to integrate new quantitative metrics, generate sensor-based, non-invasive approaches, and include physical movement into convincingly personified communications, making them capable of conducting a remote diagnosis, surgery, hygiene, and automated health screening tracking activities (Mann et al., 2015; Louie et al., 2014; Beuscher et al., 2017).

Problem (Opportunity) and Goals: Socially Assistive Robots

In the pre-and post-pandemic era, the primary healthcare setting has struggled with labor shortages, rising costs of recruiting competent healthcare professionals, workflow inefficiencies, increased workloads, reduced treatment efficiency, patient safety issues, and poor patient outcomes. Zayas-Cabán et al. (2021) report that the National Academy of Medicine published different reports showing the systemic safety and quality shortcomings within the country’s healthcare system. Besides, Morgan et al. (2022) report that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the challenges in most hospitals, as there was an increase in staff vacancy, social restrictions curtailed most of the traditional care delivery methods, and human-provided care suffered from strict disease control measures. According to Zayas-Cabán et al. (2021), technology, especially robotic systems, can streamline and automate workflows, helping address the U.S. healthcare system’s problems with the efficiency, safety, and quality of healthcare services. Robotics, especially SARs, present healthcare systems with various benefits due to their use in enabling people with motor, cognitive, and sensory challenges, the ill and injured, supporting caregivers, and assisting the clinical workforce in achieving efficient and quality healthcare delivery (Riek, 2017). The short- and long-term goals of the project include the following:

• Adopt SARs to eliminate the workload and burnout among healthcare staff to deliver quality and safe care.
• Automate the healthcare workflow to perform complex tasks, including remote diagnosis, surgery, and health screening tracking, to reduce the healthcare costs that the organization incurs in the long run.

Key Factors and Supporting Evidence

Evidence suggests that despite massive innovations and technological advancements, labor shortages, increasing recruitment costs, inefficient workflows, patient safety, and quality treatment outcomes remain fundamental problems healthcare organizations and leaders face today. This section focuses on the presentation of the key facts and evidence regarding the organizational problem, the work environment, present technology, organizational structure, processes, the functional requirements for the new technology, the implementation, and recommendations for the organization to consider in the future.

Organizational Context

Situation Analysis

Labor shortages, patient safety, inefficient workflows, poor patient outcomes, and rising healthcare personnel recruitment costs remain fundamental problems for the primary healthcare setting or system in the U.S. At XYZ Healthcare, and providers are focused on offering quality and safe care delivery that produces high, positive patient treatment outcomes. While the organization has had exceptional medical and technological innovations over the past decade, the leadership has not considered robotic automation and the benefits it could bring to its hospitals around the county. Currently, the organization needs the systems to achieve remote diagnostics, treatments, screening tracking of remote patients, and full-time patient monitoring and surveillance. At the same time, the existing staff is increasingly overstretched, overloaded, and prone to burnout. With an overstretched workforce, the organization has failed to meet patients’ social, cognitive, and physical needs, exposing them to unsafe situations and resulting in poor treatment outcomes. With these challenges, the organization’s chief executive officer (CEO) and the board have accepted a proposal to adopt and implement SARs in patient care to improve the quality-of-care delivery to diverse patients. The fundamental motivation for adopting the robotic system is drawn from the positive perceptions derived from past research work, including its acceptance in curbing social loneliness and disconnectedness between healthcare providers and patients in the post-pandemic era (Cornwell & Waite, 2009, Harrington et al., 2021). While some practitioners might think that SARs might be used to replace their jobs, they also contend that the robots can be fundamental in alleviating some of the burden experienced among informal and formal caregivers, classifying the technology as enjoyable and easy to use (Bar-On et al., 2023; Stanojevic, 2022).

Functional Requirements

Different researchers have investigated the perceptions among patients and care providers regarding integrating SARs into the primary healthcare system. Papadopoulos et al. (2023) conducted a study to investigate the perceptions among healthcare professionals towards SARs, revealing that most people are positive about the impacts of the robots in care delivery despite a few participants expressing their concerns with the technology’s implementation, including the cultural dimensions of its orientation and uncertainty avoidance.

At the same time, other studies offer similar findings. Getson and Nejat (2022) found that healthcare staff has a positive perception of a screening robot, and autonomous screening through social robots is an actual application in care homes and primary care settings in the future, maintaining its benefits would ensure efficiency in care delivery. However, He et al. (2022) revealed that the attitude toward the robots differs based on different characteristics, such as the cultural backgrounds of patients and caregivers and age. Similarly, Dembovski et al. (2022) found that SARs can help patients with their physical rehabilitation process and eliminate some of the burden on the informal caregivers, including family members and spouses of patients, while also assisting formal caregivers in workload management.

Chita-Tegmark and Scheutz (2021) revealed that SARs could assist individuals with health conditions to maintain positive social lives through support in their social interactions. With robots gaining popularity in the primary care setting, they can be of real help in health and social management. The study showed that SARs could lessen caregivers’ workload burden and burnout, providing hospitals with the most effective tool for cognitive, social, and physical patient monitoring. Precisely, the proposed technology would meet the following organizational and functional requirements:

• Remote screening tracking
• Remote diagnostics
• Surgery
• Hygiene-related tasks

Implementation and Timeline

Technology Acquisition Process

Boccanfuso et al. (2016) stated that the retail cost of robot components is around $200, excluding the computing hardware. However, other sources indicate that installing and integrating a SAR can go as high as $7990 for a Nao robot, paired with educational materials retailing at around $4200 yearly. In contrast, Milo robots can cost approximately $5000 (Dickstein-Fischer et al., 2018). Careful online research was conducted to compare the prices and features of the various types of SARs as indicated in Table 1 below. The price analysis revealed Amazon as the most ideal vendor due to its competitive pricing, free shipping, and comprehensive warranty period, allowing the user exceptional freedom to integrate the technology.

Table 1.

Technology Implementation Process

The only perceived barrier to implementing the technology is the ethnic and cultural background and diversity among patients and caregivers that might influence the acceptability of the technology. Providers will be trained to adapt to the robots. Below is the proposed implementation plan for the SARs:

• Comparison and selection of the most suitable robot brands for practice from July 30, 2023.
• Sourcing for and securing the required finances from the company’s finance department should be ready by May 27, 2023.
• Gaining the necessary approvals from the CEO and the board, including the chief finance officer (CFO), for purchasing the robots by June 1, 2023.
• Purchase the robots by June 15, 2023.
• Arrange for instruction sessions to educate caregivers on how to use the robots by June 20, 2023.
• Start piloting and integrating the robots into the healthcare system by June 25, 2023.
• Full-scale implementation of the robotic system and its use in daily practice from July 30, 2023.

Recommendation

Next Steps

The report provides the research results into the purchase and implementation of SARs in primary care. This section offers suggestions for the recommended actions to attain the short- and long-term goals.

1. Follow the above steps to adopt and implement the technology completely. Carefully following the highlighted steps will help select and integrate the most suitable robot.
2. Conduct an assessment or evaluation within three months after integration to assess the quality and safety of patient care. The robots will have achieved the intended purpose if they help improve care safety, quality, and outcome.
3. Involve all stakeholders. Complete involvement of the hospital’s stakeholders is appropriate in leveraging the full potential of the technology.

The implementation team must follow the steps to ensure the robots are adequately purchased and integrated. It is essential to note that the organization would be undertaking the initiative for the first time. It needs careful following of the plan. Following the plan would ensure that the team does not omit any step and selects the most appropriate technology based on the organization’s financial standing and ability to operate the technology. It will also ensure that the correct individuals are involved and timelines are observed. The organization should begin using the robots at the designated date.

Three months after adoption and implementation, the organization should assess and evaluate the progress of the technology. This can be done through external or internal auditors. The primary aim of the assessment would be to examine the financial implications and sustainability of the project to the organization. Significantly, the evaluation would provide essential information to inform whether the organization should progress with the technology or halt its implementation at the pilot stage. Thus, the organization must assess the progress of the technology after three months of the pilot study.

For the technology to have maximum impact and be accepted by all employees, the organization must involve all stakeholders. These include caregivers, patients, and the management team. Patients can be informed of the changes and that they will begin interacting with the robots instead of the normal caregivers. The caregivers must be trained to operate the robots to ensure they have a complete understanding. Involving all stakeholders would be appropriate in the technology’s comprehensive application, providing the organization leverages its full potential.

Despite enormous investments and innovation in healthcare, patient safety, inefficient workflows, and poor patient outcomes remain glaring problems that healthcare organizations should address. Today, hospitals are highly overstretched, with labor shortages compromising the ability to deliver quality healthcare services. This report suggests the adoption of socially assistive robots to alleviate the problem.

References

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