New pharmacy robot 'Steve' frees up resource

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust services a population of around one million people, employs more than 7,000 staff, and has around 900 beds across its two hospitals.

Recognising the opportunity to automate some of its most mundane and time-consuming manual activities, the Trust identified an existing process that appeared to be an ideal candidate for Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

The Trust’s pharmacy routinely orders a huge variety of medications, which, in turn, generates a high number of invoices to be processed. Many are also from the same supplier, meaning there was an opportunity to consolidate invoices and make fewer transactions.

With its experience of implementing large-scale automation projects successfully, the Trust turned to NHS SBS to explore whether this was a good place to begin its RPA journey and to guide it through the development activity.

NHS SBS automation experts collaborated with the Trust to create a clear plan and plot the journey towards developing a potential RPA solution – using innovation UiPath technology and NHS SBS securely-hosted infrastructure.

Firstly, the NHS SBS team delivered a series of workshops to identify the precise challenge and existing process – to ensure that RPA was indeed the best solution. This also highlighted any potential barriers to implementation or impact on other systems, and ensured Trust colleagues were engaged in the process and recognised the benefits RPA could deliver.

The team was then able to design and develop a comprehensive RPA solution – following high-quality documentation, testing and approvals at each stage of the project.

This led to the launch of a robot (or bot) nicknamed ‘Steve’, which was programmed to handle the very specific task of consolidating pharmacy invoices into a single weekly payment, achieving reduced invoice payment costs.