DocPlanner:

DocPlanner is the world’s biggest healthcare platform (and the market leader in 13 countries) with 2,200 employees, 130,000 active healthcare professionals, and over 7,000,000 appointments booked monthly via the DocPlanner app.

Their app works within the logic of Electronic Health Records, allowing patients to easily schedule appointments and medical facilities to manage the bookings and their networks of healthcare providers (doctors, physicians, and healthcare specialists).

DocPlanner had a very well-defined business vision: they wanted to increase the number of people using their app and become the booking system of the first choice in the markets they operate on. 

The main challenge they face is that plenty of medical clinics still utilize outdated, legacy software and various Electronic Health Records systems, and they are reluctant to change. Although Docplanner is already integrated with plenty of healthcare management tools, there are still a lot of systems on the market not offering any API/integration other than RPA. 

Even when clinics use the DocPlanner solution, in many instances, they still keep the second system in place, moving the data between systems manually, which requires a lot of manual labor and is prone to making mistakes. In some instances, they are forced to keep the old system, due to the lack of certain local functionalities within the DocPlanner app.

During the solution research, DocPlanner reached out to UiPath, a leading RPA platform. UiPath created a simple PoC of one automation and recommended Flobotics as a development partner.

From day one we realized the huge potential of bringing automation to DocPlanner, going beyond the assumptions made initially and DocPlanner and the UiPath team. The automation should be built as universally as possible, allowing easy adjustments to new medical clinics, other medical systems, and different markets.

The goal was to fully integrate various types of EHRs/EMRs within the DocPlanner app, automatically moving and processing data.

Since the PoC designed by UiPath was dedicated to only one external app, one facility, and one local market, we decided to keep the logic, but rewrite it from scratch, allowing easier scalability.

The RPA bot would now automatically extract the data between EHR/EMR or a database and pass it to the DocPlanner app, performing various, automated tasks on the way.

What data is being automatically migrated? Whatever is needed!:

• detailed patient data (personal info, Social Security Number, etc.)
• Patient’s insurance details
• Healthcare provider's data (clinics, clinicians, etc)
• detailed appointments info (location, service codes)
• Actions and tasks (scheduling, canceling, rescheduling, etc.)

After three weeks of development, we were ready to deploy the MVP. A few facilities volunteered to test the new system, so we were ready to go.

Here are some sneak peeks of how the automation works:

Automating patients' profiles creation and appointment scheduling in Simple Practice EHR

Automating patient profiles creation in Nubimed EHR system with RPA

After the immediate success of the first automation, we began to scale it. We built an automation system that can be easily extended to:

• new/legacy EHR software used by the clinics,
• new facilities using the already integrated software,
• different geographic markets.

We have also been also successfully adding new features to the system. Here is the detailed list:

• Automated patient data migration within all the apps connected to the system
• Supporting rescheduled and canceled visits
• One, universal dispatcher bot for many performer bots
• Support of new markets and language versions
• adding support for ad-hoc migration of data
• an exception system to notify clinic employees about various edge cases of patients/appointments that require their manual action
• Automated or manual launch of the bots
• reporting and messaging in the native languages of supported markets (ES, PL, IT, PT-BR)
• RPA Supervisor Tool for bot monitoring and data visualization (Business Intelligence Dashboards)
• Automated system deployment for every new facility added to the system, so there is no need for engaging the developer (in the backlog).

As of today, the RPA system works in Spain (DriCloud, EsiClinic, MnProgram, Gesden), Brazil (Quark, Clinnet), Poland (mMedica), and Italy (Arzamed, MedInformatica, Quaderno Elettronico, Orisdent, Elios, Onit, Vettore) and is used by 17 clinics.

Clinicians and back-office workers need way less time to move patients’ data between systems, as they only take care of the edge cases - more than 98% are processed automatically, with no mistakes.

From DocPlanner's business perspective, implementing RPA drove more users to the app, which meant more business and strengthening their position in the market.

As new clinics, software integrations, and markets are continuously being added to the network, the reach, and capabilities of the Doclpanner app increase.

Thank you DocPlanner for your (ongoing) trust!