Automation in Healthcare
I was asked to introduce an event on Automation in Healthcare on 8 October 2020.
This was the first event arranged by new health tech cluster being set up in partnership between Dynamo North East, a not-for-profit with the mission to grow the north east of England’s tech economy, and CGI, a global IT and consulting services firm.
One of the themes that had a lot of interest in early conversations around the cluster was process automation, which led to the set-up of this event.
We spoke at a time when the health system was gearing up again for an increase in Covid-19 cases. Automation is something that’s becoming a front-of-mind topic in healthcare — one of those things that many people were thinking about anyway, that has been accelerated as part of the response to the pandemic.
There are many different angles on automation, whether it’s in a clinical context or the back office. The team assembled a great line up of speakers to share more about their automation work in healthcare:
- CGI with NHS Scotland
- Blue Prism with Connect Health
- UiPath with NHS England and NHS Improvement
- Automation Anywhere with Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Cloud Trade with Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
This gave us a broad range of views from the health system and technology companies, with real examples. I thought it was unusual and very helpful to get the leading vendors represented in a single event.
Watch the event
I sense the conversation over the last few years has moved on from being excitement at the potential of automation, to celebrating some real progress and learning about how to bring in the whole organisation.
The full video of the event is available to watch again:
Creating a new health tech cluster in the north east
Behind the scenes of the new health tech cluster is a group that has been coming together with the North East Local Enterprise Partnership and others. It has been starting to understand the landscape of organisations who are relevant to health tech in the region:
Health and health-tech is a very broad topic, so as the group has been coming together it has done some initial work to identify the themes it should focus on.
The north east already has a great reputation for the health system in the region. The conversations around the aims of the cluster have been around showing a model of what digital health system can look like, that is recognised nationally and beyond for better outcomes for patients, as well as creating more and better jobs in the region’s tech sector.
The group is already seeing some successes with larger companies partnering with local startups to bring their innovative solutions to the market. This is something that small businesses often find very difficult to do on their own because of the scale of the organisations they would like to sell into.
This is still in its early days so the group is keen for the health providers and businesses who are part of the cluster to help shape this so it is really useful to them.
Get involved
One of the aims of this event was to help the community get to know each other, and take away some useful material and some new connections. What the group does next will be shaped by the community. Emma Whitenstall at Dynamo is bringing this all together, so please get in touch with her at emma.whitenstall@dynamonortheast.co.uk if you would like to get involved.
