Research by Gartner Inc. found that 50% of US healthcare providers will invest in robotic process automation in the next three years, up from 5% today. The Covid-19 pandemic is helping provide a tailwind to the increase.

“Cost optimization is a consistently recurring theme among healthcare providers,” said Anurag Gupta, research VP at Gartner. “The money that RPA saves by not having to spend as much on an unreformed process translates into cash that is available for front-end clinical functions, which is especially important while healthcare organizations combat the Covid-19 crisis.”

Gartner reports healthcare providers are using robotic process automation for “non-vertical-specific tasks, such as staffing an IT help desk as well as critical vertical-specific tasks, such as physician credentialing or verifying insurance eligibility.”

Investopedia defines robotic process automation as software that can be programmed to do basic tasks across applications similar to a human being. Examples of such tasks might include checking forms for completeness, updating spreadsheets and filing forms in folders.