Whether it’s public healthcare or payer-provider care, the healthcare industry is searching for long-term answers to the real-world problems they face, including increasing backlogs, recruitment and staff retention challenges, and an aging population. Many providers are turning to new technologies to meet growing patient care demands and augment healthcare professionals’ work – increasing service capacity and productivity and improving patient outcomes.

Healthcare automation technology trends aren’t slowing down, and in 2024 we’ll see a lot more evolving across intelligent automation (IA), artificial intelligence (AI), cloud-native platforms and other complementary digital technologies to improve the ability to deliver clinically safe patient care and meet the growing demands.

SS&C Blue Prism’s intelligent automation solution significantly assists with back, mid and front office processes, providing a flexible and intelligent virtual workforce that can perform any objective process on any clinical or back-office application continuously and consistently.

Automation delivers productivity gains, and operational efficiencies, reduces costs, improves data quality and transforms both patient and employee experience by automating mundane, repetitive and time-consuming tasks and improving patient care. Our predictions for this year aim to help you plan for the next evolution of healthcare through automation.

What Are the Trends in Healthcare Technology?

The healthcare industry is expanding its capabilities to more digital solutions. These will streamline processes in patient pathways and support healthcare professionals to have more time to diagnose and treat patients and keep them informed. We’ve identified seven healthcare tech trends leading into 2024 to guide your organization’s automation plans and help you continuously provide the best care for your patients.

1. Multi-tenanted platforms
2. Scalability, cloud accessibility and generative AI
3. Overcoming talent shortages
4. Omni-medicine
5. Health equity gaps
6. Personalized medicine
7. Privacy and ethical concerns

But first, a quick note on IA. IA combines robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), business process management (BPM) and AI. It streamlines care delivery by reducing bottlenecks and paperwork-heavy processes. This gives time back to staff and gives patients better accessibility through digital services, automated notifications and tracking.

#1: Multi-tenanted platforms

2024 prediction: Providers will look at converging healthcare systems to allow for easier delivery of care services.

Key takeaways:

• Many healthcare organizations still work with legacy infrastructure and across disparate systems, making it difficult to access patient data when it’s needed.
• Interoperability will be a key motivator as healthcare providers try to improve patient data flow with quicker, more accurate identification of high-risk patients.

Insight:

We predict more healthcare organizations will virtualize access to all their systems, giving the ability to process with solutions that can access data from the perspective required. They may at least look for IA platforms that prove interoperability so it’s easier to transfer and access information and patient records across systems. This will be a key enabler for reducing bottlenecks and patient wait times caused by system backlogs.

#2: Scalability, cloud and generative AI

2024 prediction:

Providers will adopt the cloud for better scaling and consistency of their processes, and many will go a step further with generative AI.

Key takeaways:

• Healthcare providers working in legacy systems will utilize cloud-based automation solutions to help them keep their systems up-to-date and reduce system downtime.
• Providers should consider a hybrid cloud approach to get the benefits of cloud with the security offered by on-premises systems.

Insight:

For healthcare, the cloud will be especially useful for addressing major issues in service delivery, patient reach (especially for those in low-income or rural areas) and record/patient history management. EMRs in the cloud will offer real-time data so healthcare professionals can access relevant patient information when they need it. This reduces their time at the desk and enables them to have more face-to-face patient interactions. This, in turn, ensures clinicians can take the time to ask patients follow-up questions before diagnosis.

#3: Omni-medicine

2024 prediction:

We’ll see a blend in patient care to include in-person and digital consultations. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) will continue to be a huge benchmark for evolving healthcare capabilities, expanding patients’ care accessibility.

Key takeaways:

• Telemedicine and RPM will evolve to blend in-person and virtual consultations.
• Virtual doctor visits and remote patient monitoring tools will enable better access to medical care.
• The younger, tech-savvy generations will often prefer the convenience of telemedicine over in-person consultations for both cost and time savings.

Insight:

In virtual healthcare, we’ll see more online appointments, remote care and video monitoring. This will improve the relationship between patients and healthcare services. It will also provide better accessibility while freeing up in-person clinical space – much needed in this era of aging populations, underfunding and staff shortages. It will also allow for more focus on mental health, which disproportionately affects low-income patients. With telemedicine, patients can receive help from therapists sooner. Healthcare technology will enable accessibility and communication for the most vulnerable patients, including those with chronic disorders or mental illness.

#4: Overcoming talent shortages

2024 prediction: With labor shortages affecting the healthcare industry, providers will reduce the time it takes to find qualified staff with AI-augmented human resources (HR) hiring tools. This will reduce administrative tasks to help better utilize their current resources.

Key takeaways:

• More organizations will look to automation through AI and telemedicine to reduce backlogs and overcome long patient wait times.
• IA can help scan through prospective hires and identify those best qualified, reducing the time it takes for HR teams to hire and onboard clinical staff.

Insight:

AI-based automation tools can work on several levels for the healthcare industry. They can help HR staff find qualified healthcare candidates sooner and can reduce tedious manual tasks, so employees are more engaged in their work and less likely to leave. IA reduces employee churn and can also subsidize labor shortages by clearing up patient backlogs and digitizing patient records. In many ways, remote/virtual care will open new opportunities for experienced clinicians who want to continue working in healthcare but dial back their in-office hours.

#5: Health equity gaps

2024 prediction: With care disparities on the rise, we’ll see health services take on automation solutions to tackle health inequity.

Key takeaways:

• IA can bridge healthcare gaps by reaching vulnerable or once-inaccessible populations through remote or virtual care.
• IA connects disparate systems, making it easier to refer patients sooner and reducing wait times, especially for critical care cases.

Insight:

Automation not only frees up more critical clinician time to spend with patients but also allows for more digitized services. Patients can stay in the loop by tracking their appointments, checkups, diagnostics, health records, etc. By advancing remote patient care, providers can also access those hard-to-reach areas, ensuring patients get the care they need. And with generative AI pushing the capabilities of forecasting and diagnosing, we may see further reach in closing the healthcare equity gap.

#6: Personalized medicine

2024 prediction: IA will enable a personalized patient experience, helping them get timely care, and generative AI will further augment this.

Key takeaways:

• Patients will have better access to care and their own patient records.
• Digital reminders will help patients with appointment scheduling and reminders, and prescription renewals – reducing the administrative burden on the healthcare system.
• Gen AI can augment clinician decision-making and detect anomalies a human might miss.

Insight:

With IA allowing clinicians to spend less time on administrative tasks, such as filing and searching for patient data, they can focus their time on face-to-face patient interaction. An IA centralized dashboard allows clinicians to easily access the necessary patient data to augment their decision-making and speed up their time in diagnosing their patients. IA also facilitates scheduling, follow-up appointments and coordinating care so patients receive prompt care and see their clinician when they need to.  

#7: Privacy and ethical concerns

2024 prediction: Healthcare providers will use IA to ensure they’re staying compliant by keeping patient data secure and avoiding costly data leakages.

Key takeaways:

• Healthcare data volume is growing, and legacy systems aren’t enough to store it securely.
• Digital workers work quickly, accurately and efficiently to ensure timely, quality service.
• IA reduces the risk of human errors and non-compliance.

Insight:

Patient medical data is highly sensitive and requires robust security and data governance. IA systems can enforce strict access controls to ensure only authorized personnel gain access to patient data, ensuring your data protection is aligned with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the U.S. 

What Are the Future Possibilities of Automation and AI in Healthcare?

Without automation, many administrative tasks involve manual data entry, which can be prone to human error and can increase backlogs. IA facilitates the digitization and easy transfer of important patient data while ensuring security and compliance.

Cancer Care

Why Is Implementing Automation Needed in Future Healthcare?

The future of healthcare relies on providers’ willingness to be agile, innovative and forward-thinking. IA makes that not only possible but also the best choice for a growing patient list and increasing demand.

We’ll see demand for healthcare continue to rise as patient expectations increase. Digital services, online portals, telemedicine and interoperability are all critical assets for healthcare providers wanting to improve their patient outcomes and deal with staffing shortages, large volumes of data and legacy systems. Intelligent automation is the next big step for healthcare, and in 2024, we’ll see it taken even further with advanced language learning models (LLMs) and gen AI.

SS&C Blue Prism is your IA provider, helping you strategize, deploy and scale your automations for a better future, today.