What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can we improve across system boundaries?​

NHS organisations are facing unprecedented increases in demand which impact on every part of the system. This has resulted in a high administrative burden on organisations and a need to increase productivity and reduce waste in administrative processes.

Robotic Process Automation is a software technology utilising digital workers (robots) to perform and automate high-volume manual, repetitive, and rule-based tasks, using process flows to guide them.

RPA has the potential to revolutionise the way organisations work in both primary and secondary care, by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, freeing up our employees to focus on higher value activities that directly benefit patient outcomes.

Work has been done across the North West Coast to start to share learning around RPA between secondary and primary care and we have a number of interested organisations. This project would allow us to take this work forward, developing a deployment blueprint and a Community of Practice.

What does your project aim to achieve?

• Our project aims to create a comprehensive RPA deployment blueprint, outlining the actions and standards needed for a successful deployment.
• We will involve establishing a Community of Practice for RPA. This will allow learning to be shared with Q members and the wider system. This will help to boost the culture, capabilities and structures needed for learning and improvement around RPA.
• Through supporting organisations to utilise RPA and sharing learning across system boundaries we aim to unlock the potential of RPA to increase productivity and embed improvement into management systems and processes.
• Improved patient outcomes due to improved information within the clinical record
• Improved quality of clinical documentation
• More clinical time freed up to focus on clinical care and more administration time freed up for other duties.
• Reduction in health inequalities as all places will be able to access the resources and community of practice to benefit their patients.

How will the project be delivered?

This bid is to develop the below activities.

• The creation of a comprehensive RPA deployment blueprint for GP practices, outlining the necessary actions and minimum standards needed for a successful deployment. This will consider areas such as clinical risk and recording benefits.
• Creation of community of practice for RPA
• Stakeholder mapping exercise to develop stakeholder matrix
• Development of NHS Futures site to share resources
• Horizon scan of RPA technology across primary and secondary care to be developed and shared.

The project will be delivered via facilitation of the community of practice by Health Innovation North West Coast.  The ICB and HINWC will collaborate with other partners as required to develop and share the blueprint.

How is your project going to share learning?

• The creation of a comprehensive RPA deployment blueprint for GP practices, outlining the necessary actions and minimum standards needed for a successful deployment.
• The project will involve establishing a Community of Practice for RPA. This will allow learning to be shared with Q members and the wider system.
• An NHS Futures page to be established to share resources.
• Resources produced as part of the project such as a Horizon scan and Governance Framework to be shared.