A Bangkok hospital, one of the largest private healthcare providers in Thailand, has moved away from the paper-based and manual process of registering and managing patient flow at its premises.
AI technologies provided by the company’s partner, local startup Agnos Health, now underpin its patient registration and management systems.
HOW IT’S WORKING
As part of an improved patient flow system, the tertiary care hospital implemented self-service kiosks based on multiple AI solutions and integrating different registration steps.
It includes AI facial recognition to identify and confirm patient identities; AI symptom checkers that initially search patient histories to direct patients to the appropriate department or clinic; and robotic process automation to automatically verify insurance. The system can also obtain patient data electronic consent to the collection of personal data and the issuance of electronic visit forms enabling the tracking of the service status.
Meanwhile, the Bangkok hospital’s control room, Health Design Centre (HDC), has also switched from a manual patient queuing system to a digital system.
Nurses can now monitor and manage patient queues, with status provided to patients via mobile channels and the ward TV screen. The system has AI that tracks service status and recommends re-purposing rooms to reduce foot traffic in certain areas.
HDC can now send electronic forms that patients can fill out, even before they go to the hospital. AI assesses them for health risks and then recommends appropriate packages of check-up tests.
The AI in this department processes patient check-up lists, waiting times, appointments and clinical priorities to recommend the optimal order of tests.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT
Since upgrading its registration system with AI, Bangkok Hospital has seen a reduction in front-end and back-end procedures, including taking patient medical histories. Waiting times have also been reduced, as the number of registration steps has been reduced by 45% compared to the previous system.
The hospital claims Patient queues in the control ward are now evenly distributed. HDC sees 200 to 300 patients a day, each with different check-up packages, procedures and times. With AI, staff spend less time informing patients about wait times and next steps and answering common questions. Wait times are half those of the previous manual system.
BIGGER TREND
Private hospital operators in Thailand have been increasingly investing in and implementing data and digital technologies as part of their digital transformation initiatives in recent years.
Srisawa HospitalA private tertiary care hospital in Nakhon Sawan, a city north of Bangkok, recently turned to GE HealthCare and InterSystems to assist it digitize its asset and human resources management and install an integrated HIS system in its Bangkok branch.
To prove its maturity in the employ of EMR technology, Princ Hospital in Suvarnabhumi, part of the privately owned Principle Healthcare Group, has passed the HIMSS Stage 7 assessment Electronic Medical Records Adoption ModelIt is currently the only hospital in Thailand to achieve this highest validation, which it received earlier this year.