Scalable RPA Solution for the Healthcare Institution of North Iceland

About Client

Heilbrigðisstofnun Norðurlands (HSN) is the largest national healthcare institution in 
Iceland that operates 18 clinics, 4 hospitals, and 3 nursing homes in the northern part of
the country. Having the broadest regional coverage among other Icelandic healthcare
institutions, HSN provides a full spectrum of healthcare services to over 35,000 patients, including general medical practice, infant and maternity care, school/home nursing, and psychological counseling.

• Location: Iceland
• Industry: Healthcare
• Employees:500+
• Website: www.hsn.is/is

Business Challenge

HSN is the most progressive healthcare institution in Iceland that constantly pursues new digital transformation initiatives to improve its efficiency, productivity, and patient
experience. HSN had previously started its RPA journey and managed to automate a range of internal processes with a classical RPA solution. However, our client struggled withexcessive licensing costs and a slow pace of RPA adoption. Hence, HSN had to put the project on hold to reconsider its business goals and requirements. After the re-assessment, the client formed a spectrum of key business challenges they had to tackle, namely:

• Find an experienced IT partner to help HSN facilitate their RPA adoption journey 
• Identify and implement the best-case automation scenarios to enhance operational 
  efficiency
• Optimize licensing and maintenance costs by selecting an alternative RPA tool
• Relieve employees of onerous manual work to increase their job satisfaction and 
  productivity
• Enable precise data collection, processing, and management to improve patient 
  experience

With renewed strategic objectives in mind, HSN began searching for a reliable IT service
provider and eventually found Infopulse, now part of Tietoevry Create, through the efforts of our mutual partner Imperio – an Icelandic IT sourcing company that provides tailored digital services in the Nordics. 

After studying HSN’s business case, Imperio came up with an ambitious idea to develop a scalable and cost-efficient RPA solution based on Microsoft Power Automate. In addition to addressing the business challenges of HSN, the RPA solution could potentially be scaled across other regional institutions, thus driving the digital transformation of the entire Icelandic healthcare sector. 

Solution 

In collaboration with Imperio and Microsoft, we started developing a PoC of the RPA 
solution that involved the automation of numerous simple HR reporting processes. The
RPA bot extracted the client’s HR reports from an Oracle database and checked the
availability of various HR data, such as:

• Registered employee address, phone number, and e-mail 
• Ownership of an access control card and its status (active/inactive)
• Employment status, including onboarding/offboarding dates 

If any information was absent or incomplete, the RPA solution notified the respective 
employees to fill in the data. In the case when an employment contract had expired or was terminated, the RPA bot informed the administrators about the need to block the access card and remove the credentials of a former employee.

Being satisfied with the PoC results, HSN agreed to proceed with the development of a 
fully-fledged RPA solution. Imperio and HSN began analyzing the best options for process automation and managed to prioritize a backlog of to-be automated workflows. As of today, the RPA solution automates 20+ HR and financial processes, including report generation and verification, data entry, extraction, and migration across HSN’s systems, and patient data synchronization. Over 50 new HSN processes are now in the pipeline.

In addition to the ongoing process automation efforts, our team developed a custom form recognition feature by utilizing AI Builder – a Microsoft Power Platform tool for creating AI models. Upon the creation of an entry, a PDF file with client data, such as tax identification number, address, family member’s data, and appointment history, is dropped into a shared network folder. The RPA solution automatically recognizes, extracts, processes, and transfers all the patient data into the HSN’s dedicated database and updates it in real-time.

What makes the RPA solution stand out is its exceptional scalability. In essence, the solution serves as a “marketplace” of automated workflows, which can potentially be deployed across Icelandic healthcare institutions en masse.

As the country’s entire healthcare sector has a similar IT infrastructure and processes, other regional institutions can access the “marketplace” and select certain workflows that were previously automated for HSN. In such a case, we will only have to adjust the automation scripts to the new institution by changing the usernames and other inputs. However, if another institution wants to automate a new custom process that is absent in the “marketplace”, we will have to develop it from scratch.

The aim of this project was to support the digital transformation strategy of the healthcare sector in Iceland by lowering the threshold of entry for automation. By further exploiting the implementation of M365, HSN was able to take advantage of Microsoft products from Power Platform with the result of cost savings, workplace satisfaction, productivity, and profit as well as targeting the unit costs – all leading to a higher quality ratio and better service. The support of Microsoft Iceland & Denmark was essential for the quick adoption of the technology while our partnership with Infopulse (now Tietoevry Create) provided us with the necessary expertise and professionalism required on a large scale and helped us to deliver a sustainable project for the future.

- Svavar Vidarsson, CEO at Imperio

 Technologies & Tools

• Azure Key Vault
• Microsoft Power Automate
• Microsoft Power Automate Desktop
• AI Builder in Power Automate 

Business Value 

The ingenious RPA solution for HSN has successfully addressed the full spectrum of HSN’s business challenges in terms of operational efficiency, cost savings, and patient experience. Most importantly, the inherent scalability of the solution promises to create identical value for other Icelandic healthcare institutions and their patients for years to come.

For now, the RPA solution brings the following benefits to HSN: 

• Swift and error-free data entry, processing, and management, streamlining HR & 
  financial operations
• Higher employee productivity and satisfaction, as they can focus on valuable tasks 
  instead of tedious labor
• Consolidated and continuously updated patient data, which significantly improves 
  patient experience
• Overall annual total cost (TC) expenses reduced by 10+ million Icelandic krónur 
  (ISK) through 20+ automated processes and a more cost-efficient RPA licensing

Tietoevry Create and Imperio plan to continue enhancing the solution for HSN and 
gradually onboard other regional Icelandic healthcare institutions to the project.

HSN has always been keen on exploring and harnessing the capabilities of digital technologies to support our employees and enhance patient care. We are very proud to be at the forefront of a pioneering RPA project that can potentially drive the digital transformation of the entire Icelandic healthcare sector. HSN would like to express sincere gratitude to our partners at Imperio and Tietoevry Create (formerly Infopulse) who have brought this ambitious idea to life. The elegant and
promising RPA solution has helped us save a tremendous amount of time, effort, and costs, boost employee satisfaction and provide better medical services. Our partners have won our trust by demonstrating professionalism, responsibility, and profound expertise in cognitive technologies and the Microsoft tech stack. Together with our partners, we plan to continue advancing the RPA solution, scaling it across peer healthcare institutions, and pursuing new digital endeavors by utilizing Microsoft Power Platform.

- Þórhallur Harðarson, CFO at HSN