Priorities to accelerate workflow automation in health care

Abstract

Inefficient workflows affect many health care stakeholders including patients, caregivers, clinicians, and staff. Widespread health information technology adoption and modern computing provide opportunities for more efficient health care workflows through automation. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) led a multidisciplinary effort with stakeholders across health care and experts in industrial engineering, computer science, and finance to explore opportunities for automation in health care. The effort included semistructured key informant interviews, a review of relevant literature, and a workshop to understand automation lessons across nonhealth care industries that could be applied to health care. In this article, we describe considerations for advancing workflow automation in health care that were identified through these activities. We also discuss a set of six priorities and related strategies developed through the ONC-led effort and highlight the role the informatics and research communities have in advancing each priority and the strategies.

Human Factors and Organizational Issues: Contributions from 2022

“…The wellbeing of providers themselves is known to be impacted by the conditions under which they work to care for patients and how they must document that care, so the usability of electronic health records (EHRs) also receives a good deal of attention. Unwarranted alerts that nevertheless must be overridden before continuing are a particular annoyance, leading to what has come to be known as "alert fatigue" [8][9][10]. With increasing emphasis on AI, automation and augmented intelligence in the healthcare space, [11] provides a timely analysis of agency and collaboration between a human operator and an automatic process.…”

The Radiation Therapist profession through the lens of new technology: A practice development paper based on the ESTRO Radiation Therapist Workshops

“…Radiation therapists, who understand the intricacies of the RT workflow, are in an ideal position to identify areas where further technological intervention is most needed or will have greatest impact. Prioritising solutions that address clinical and workforce needs are vital [3] .…”

“…Radiation therapists have an in-depth knowledge of the patient, clinical and technical data collected during RT, enabling them to proficiently identify, sort and export data relevant for the application of new technologies. Furthermore, radiation therapists can enhance the quality of the data collected, for example by optimising image quality, contours or dosimetry, where the performance of machine learning greatly depends on the quality of input data [3] , [4] .…”

“…It is therefore essential that they develop the technical skills and knowledge needed to evaluate and troubleshoot technology effectively [5] . Addressing these challenges requires education and training opportunities at undergraduate and postgraduate level to improve digital literacy and skills [6] , promoting the benefits of new technology and engaging radiation therapists in the development of technological solutions to increase their acceptability and perceived effectiveness [3] .…”

Technological Adjuncts to Streamline Clinical Research Processes: Recruitment, Informed Consent, and Data Management (Preprint)

“…Following these observations, healthcare and federal institutions have increasingly demonstrated support for the integration of digital technological capabilities within clinical research [13][14][15], especially leveraging the capabilities brought about by automating clinical processes [16,17]. In 2019, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, and National Science Foundation hosted a workshop that called for the digitization of clinical research using advanced analytics to facilitate patient screening, data management, and to potentially increase the representation of diverse patient populations [18].…”