Bangkok Hospital, one of Thailand's largest private healthcare providers, has moved away from the paper and manual process of registering and managing patient flow in its headquarters.

AI technologies provided by its partner, local startup Agnos Health, now underpin its patient registration and management systems. 

HOW IT WORKS

As part of its enhanced patient flow system, the tertiary hospital implemented self-service kiosks that run on multiple AI, integrating various registration steps. 

It features AI face recognition to identify and confirm patient identities; an AI symptom checker that initially screens a patient's history to refer them to an appropriate department or clinic; and robotic process automation for automatic insurance verification. The system can also acquire a patient's electronic consent for collecting personal data and issue e-visit slips to track service status.

Meanwhile, Bangkok Hospital's check-up department, the Health Design Center (HDC), also transitioned from manual patient queue distribution to a digital system. 

Its nurses can now monitor and manage patient queues, the status of which are delivered to patients via mobile channels and the department's television screen. The system has an AI that tracks service status and recommends repurposing rooms to relieve foot traffic in certain areas. 

The HDC can now send electronic forms that patients can fill out, even before going to the hospital. An AI assesses these for health risks and then recommends appropriate check-up packages. 

The department's AI co-pilot processes patients' check-up lists, wait times, appointments, and clinical priorities to recommend an optimal examination order. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Since augmenting its registration system with AI, Bangkok Hospital saw front-end and back-end procedures reduced, including taking patients' medical histories. Wait times were also cut as registration steps were lessened by 45% from the previous system. 

The hospital claims patient queues in the check-up department are also now evenly distributed. The HDC manages between 200 and 300 patients daily, each with varied check-up packages, procedures, and time. With AI, staff spends less time informing patients about their wait times and next steps and answering oft-repeated questions. Wait times are down by half from the previous manual system.

THE LARGER TREND

Private hospital operators in Thailand have increasingly invested in and adopted data and digital technologies in recent years as part of their digital transformation initiatives. 

Srisawan Hospital, a private tertiary hospital in Nakhon Sawan, a city north of Bangkok, recently sought the assistance of GE HealthCare and InterSystems to digitise its asset and workforce resource management and install an integrated HIS at its Bangkok branch. 

To prove its maturity in the use of EMR technology, Princ Hospital Suvarnabhumi, part of the private Principle Healthcare Group, underwent the assessment for Stage 7 of the HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model. It is currently the only hospital in Thailand to have achieved this highest validation, which it received early this year.