South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust is using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software robots, known as ‘digital workers', to handle referrals made by GPs more efficiently.

Every year, the trust receives more than 136,000 referrals for people who need investigations or an outpatient appointment. This includes patients being seen both for routine care, and for suspected cancer.

Since bringing in its digital workers, the trust has saved more than 8,000 hours of staff time. Previously, it could take up to 10 minutes for a member of staff register a referral. This now takes just four minutes, as the digital workers can work overnight, when its systems are not as busy.

Referrals are now available for review by clinical teams within 48 hours of being made, and in many cases, within 24 hours.

The digital workers also book patients for Lung Cancer Screening tests as part of the national NHS screening prevention programme. This invites 55- to 74-year-olds who are smokers or formerly smoked to be screened, as they are most likely to develop the disease in their lungs.

The trust's digital workers can each cover the workload of three administration roles, but they have not taken the jobs of any NHS staff. Instead, the technology has freed up time for human employees to focus on more complex tasks such as talking to patients to organise other parts of their care.

Michael Forrest, outpatient access and booking manager, part of the trust's team who worked alongside partners e18 Innovation and SS&C Blue Prism to introduce the digital workers. He said: ‘It's also helped the team, because it's eased the stress of having that backlog of patients and knowing people are now being seen sooner. Looking after our team is so important.

‘They're now able to concentrate on more fulfilling, interesting work, because they're not doing these labour-intensive, administrative tasks.'

Vicky Mitchell, executive director of planning and business development, added: ‘Using this technology has helped plug gaps in our workforce, while looking after our fantastic admin team, who are working hard to make sure we see patients as quickly as we can.'

She added: "We are now looking at where we can roll out more automated processes in other parts of our outpatient services and building on the success of the digital workers in our scheduling teams."