Healthcare is a vital component in everyone’s life. Everyone needs medical facilities at different stages of life. The quality of human assets a country has depends on the quality of the healthcare system. If the system is running smoothly and efficiently, it reflects the good economic condition of the country. What can be done to make the system efficient?
Everything around us is changing and evolving rapidly with the advances in technology. Today, every economic sector is connected with technology to some extent, and this will only increase shortly.
The Healthcare system is no exception to this. The sector uses different technologies to improve itself and give the people all the benefits it can. The supply chain plays a vital role in the proper functioning of the healthcare system. The chain is so long and complex that sometimes it becomes quite difficult to manage it properly. It hasn’t always drawn the attention of the executives until recently.
Artificial intelligence is the state-of-the-art technology on the minds of all, and it is believed to change the working of nearly everything you see around entirely. Its uses in certain healthcare areas also prove this, like its usage in population health and imaging.
Procure-to-Pay Automation
For getting to know to Automated procure to pay in healthcare, you need to know about procure to pay system’s working. For serving the health services to its customers, it needs to identify the vendors and suppliers for the job and then compensate them for their services. This whole process is called procure to pay. This might sound like a simple thing, but it’s more than that, more like a complex process. The process includes the following:
• Tons of procedures to be followed
• A lot of paperwork
• Collaboration
• Something can always go wrong, including fraud
The Automated procure to pay in healthcare helps to make the process a little less manual and a bit more technological by utilizing various technologies like Machine Learning, a part of Artificial intelligence. It is aimed to reduce the burden of manual labour and make the collaboration between different departments better and save money by increasing accuracy.
How can Automatic procure-to-pay help?
The Healthcare supply chain involves two main steps that are procurement and then payment of the accounts. Different departments handle both tasks. It is not always the case that the departments are nearby; in some cases, it is very much possible that they are located in different parts of the building. At times, it becomes tough to collaborate. Both departments must have shared goals and work closely for avoiding any errors. But procure to pay automation can overcome these hurdles and can benefit the system in the following ways:
• Reducing the possibility of errors
• Better compliance with every department
• Enhance the performance
With Automated procure to pay in healthcare digital automation, you will get the above benefits with increased efficiency, coordination, and a significant cut on manual labour costs.
COVID-19 andhealthcare supply chain
As the world has been facing the worst crisis of the century from the past year, who is leading this war against the virus is not hidden. The medical fraternity from worldwide has been working tirelessly, day and night, to save innocent lives. In these times, the importance of the supply chain is realized, and it also gives an idea to the executives and general public how much the healthcare system can improve and get better.
It took a pandemic to make the healthcare executives realize the role of automation and artificial intelligence. The supply chain needs restructuring now more than ever. Many supply chain professional thinks the automation and artificial intelligence can affect the system in the following manner.
• The supply chain people or stakeholders are just growing by the day. It includes many people, from the shipping person from the dockyard to the patient lying in a hospital bed; everyone is affected by the supply chain. There are talks among the hospital executives about introducing AI in the system, theoretically and practically.
• Seeing the shortage of PPE kits in many regions during the peak of the pandemic, hospitals are now storing them in large numbers, and it is taking up a large number of manual work that is costly. With the help of AI, that can be reduced.
• There is a supply shortage and a nursing and staff shortage thathas been seen recently. Without increasing the turnover, the workforce can be made smarter and better with the help of AI.
Some of the AI is in the working of the supply chains. But there are still minute things that don’t get covered in the AI’s radar for now.
Soon, the use of AI will rise, and the supply chain system and the whole healthcare system will improve. Indeed, AI is the technology of the future.