3 Ways to Leverage Robotics in Life Sciences
We’ve talked about the benefits of robotic process automation (RPA) and how it automates repetitive, mundane, back office tasks that take hours of time to complete manually. RPA also brings to the table an ability to quickly integrate data to enable agility in complex environments, making it a great technology to have for the middle and front office as well.
In life sciences, RPA can be leveraged for: clinical development, sales and customer engagement.
- Clinical development: It takes years to complete clinical-stage studies, making it one of the most expensive stages in life sciences. RPA can be useful with drug safety cases, regulatory submission and trial master processes. By making administrative tasks more efficient through the use of RPA, your company can shift more of its focus on bringing safe and effective drugs to market at a lower cost. RPA can support consistency in data entry, quality control and audit readiness during clinical and regulatory operations. It also reduces human error due to mishandling data and helps ensure trial procedures are compliant.
- Sales: In our experience, one of the biggest complaints we receive from sales reps is how they are still spending a lot of time completing data entry. Most of this stems from having to access and manage data across multiple systems. Using RPA allows sales reps to spend less time on menial tasks and more time developing relationships with providers and stakeholders. Robots act like personal assistants that can record sales activities, retrivate data, manage expenses and track inventory. With RPA, your sales team will have more time identifying how they can deliver better health outcomes for patients.
- Personalize customer engagement The way we engage customers today is changing. We’re moving in a direction where the majority of customer interactions will be managed without a human. Chatbots are being implemented across the healthcare and life sciences industries the same way they are for online retail and mobile banking apps. Conversational bots can play a vital role in allowing users to complete a task and quickly retrieve information. They can also improve response times and reduce costs, providing increased access to millions of users. Think of chatbots as a virtual medical companion.
RPA presents several opportunities for the life sciences industry that go beyond back office operations. You should begin to assess simple tasks to automate and think about how your company can move forward with intelligent automation. There are emerging practices in the industry that can help increase company value.
