Self-service kiosks for Birmingham hospital

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust is to install self-service kiosks developed with Blue Prism in the reception areas of its new hospital.

The trust is involved in a major building project, as part of which it needed to streamline its reception and registration processes.

Patrick Geary, chief marketing officer for Blue Prism, said the new hospital’s reception areas will have to handle hundreds of people per hour. “The trust really needed the kiosks. The alternative would have been employing 20 or 30 receptionists in each area,” he said.

Steve Chilton, deputy director of IT services, confirmed that the trust wanted to be able to efficiently and accurately register a large number of patients, using technology that integrated with its patient administration system and National Programme for IT in the NHS services.

He said he and his team soon decided that they would need self-service kiosks, which have been successfully used in other industries. However, they found it would be difficult to integrate some of the kiosks available with their core systems without compromising the trust’s security model.

A project team from Blue Prism built the kiosks and supporting systems, while the trust’s own IT Services built the user interface and self-registration software.

A fully operational kiosk was trialled in Selly Oak hospital for two months, with its supporting system running from the trust’s IT data centre.

It proved popular with patients, 51% of whom opted to use it, and improved the efficiency of receptionists. It also improved data quality. If a patient’s details are not correct on the kiosk, they are referred to a receptionist, who can make changes on the core PAS system. The new hospital is due to open in July 2010.

Link: Blue Prism