Healthcare Automation: Guide with Examples

LJ Acallar

November 13, 2025•17 min read

Fact checked by Dr. Maxwell Beresford

What is Automation in Healthcare?

Automation in healthcare is the process of streamlining administrative tasks previously done manually by clinicians, so they can prioritize direct patient care again.

Also sometimes referred to as intelligent automation (IA), it reduces documentation, billing, and other desk work that leaves clinicians a mental burden when left unattended. Through healthcare automation, they can make decisions safely and immediately.

Ultimately, the goal of automation is to connect healthcare systems and reduce administrative errors that are largely preventable. The desired outcome is improved quality of patient care starting at the most granular level: patient encounters.

In this article, we’ll explore data-driven automation healthcare solutions that provide not only operational efficiency but also ensure accuracy and quality. We’ll also discuss how Heidi’s range of automation functions can reduce work stress for clinicians in everyday care.

Heidi's healthcare automation solutions for hospitals, remote care, and acute care.

The Growing Need for Automation in the Healthcare Industry

The healthcare industry's pivot towards software scribes that automate workflows is driven by several critical factors, including the scarcity of medical professionals, the escalating demands of patient care, and the increasing need for accurate documentation.

Recent studies reveal that care teams do adopt AI solutions in healthcare extensively, especially to reduce clinician burden and improve job satisfaction rates. This primary goal is followed by objectives of maintaining patient safety and enhancing workflow efficiency.

These goals, shared by care organizations, align with Heidi’s vision to support healthcare through offering an innovative and intuitive AI care partner that is inevitably becoming a standard tool for clinicians worldwide.

As care cases become more complex, disconnect among specialty teams also leads to delays and gaps in care. When patients visit, they seek immediate attention, and they already bear the stress and worry of being treated.

Automation in healthcare aims to improve the patient experience through smarter workflows where AI automation allows them to check in, file appointments remotely, or approve prior authorizations. This is how centralized systems in hospitals and clinics save care providers time and resources, which benefits operations. The growing comfort with technology and positive sentiment towards AI in the medical community are pivotal in this transition.

Top Healthcare Automation Companies

Heidi

The best option for AI automation in healthcare is offering high-quality solutions for clinical documentation, coding, and patient call management. Heidi powers over 2 million consultations per week and supports over 110 languages, compliant with regional regulatory guidelines. Heidi is best used for provider-facing workflows, making it easier for clinicians to make decisions and get on with more critical tasks.

Epic

One of the largest global EHR platforms, Epic is known for its deep data integration and support for clinical workflows at scale. Mainly, its system provides systemic, administrative support used in major hospital networks and medical centers. This solution offers a different approach, which requires implementation resources for customization, in contrast with Heidi's ambient and conversational nature.

Athenahealth

Widely used in ambulatory and mid-size practices is Athenahealth, a cloud-based EHR that focuses on revenue cycle management. It streamlines workflows in billing, and its automation is rules-based. Adaptive to context, AI-powered Heidi bridges the clinician’s experience by feeding structured data back into Athena’s system.

Heidi can augment both Epic and Athenahealth while keeping clinicians in charge of decision-making. Heidi automates the human-system interface that both EHRs manage at the infrastructure level.

Clinicians are the heart of care. Healthcare organizations continue to invest in care automation companies like Heidi as the future looks promising in what it can do to further support capabilities that make care pathways more effective.

Where Automation is Used in Healthcare

The most common applications of automation in healthcare take place behind the front desk, though their impact standardizes quality far into the clinical setting. Supporting a broad range of functions, automation can handle everything from scheduling appointments and initiating patient calls to completing documentation by filling out forms. Where there is a clinical process that’s been automated, the goal is simple and shared: to relieve clinicians from the ceaseless administrative burden of completing EHRs.

As patient volume and care demands rise, clinicians face mounting administrative pressure that often leads to burnout. Automation helps offset these challenges. It helps improve operational efficiency without compromising care quality.

A Closer Look at Automation in Different Healthcare Sectors

Coordinated care teams rely on platforms like Heidi to foster high-touch, responsive care. Automated workflows remove bottlenecks that impede communication and documentation. In turn, clinicians can act promptly on patient needs.

Here are several settings where Heidi’s automation capabilities are needed and applied:

Hospitals with high patient turnover - Automation streamlines processes such as admission, discharge, and documentation, so clinicians can offload data entry and record-keeping tasks.
Remote and rural care settings - Automation supports monitoring of vital signs and other health metrics. It helps prevent potential issues thanks to early detection.
Acute care centers - These settings involve high-stakes workflows that can be supported by automation, which can ensure accuracy in dispensing medication to help management and tracking.

With Heidi shortening response times, both clinicians and patients experience more connected interactions across the care journey. When clinicians gain more confidence that more critical tasks are completed with precision and consistency, patients feel well-supported as well.

While automation continues to advance, budgetary restrictions still limit many care organizations’ ability to invest. This is why enterprise systems and clinicians alike adopt Heidi, as they not only invest in a future-proof solution but also in a tool that enables patient-centric care delivery.

This is especially true for Dr. Nick Lelos, an emergency medicine consultant who spent more than 15 years in practice but soon adapted to changes by adopting Heidi. For him, healthcare automation is more about safety than it is about speed. Bringing order to the chaos of a high-pressure care environment preserved the human touch instead of removing it, so it only made sense.

“The limiting factor for me was actually not having enough time to write good, high-quality notes. This part takes the most time,” shares Dr. Nick, recalling how documentation slowed his ability to focus on patients who needed him most

Thankfully, after implementing Heidi, he saw an immediate transformation. “Heidi has helped me a lot by being able to collect notes relatively quickly, and I can just check them on my phone or desktop.” Aside from faster documentation, he found that he could see more patients and leave shifts on time.

What started as a search for efficiency became a full embrace of healthcare automation that restored balance to his workflow and restored energy to his practice.

Real-World Examples of Healthcare Automation

Imagine how delighted patients would feel, and the time and financial wins your practice can experience when all of the administrative workflows are automatically performed. With Heidi significantly minimizing the time to manually click buttons, clinicians and care teams can expect more from AI, so they can do more. With sufficient attention and clear headspace when seeing patients, clinicians redeem time so they can deliver and maintain exceptional care.

The practical examples in this section illustrate how Heidi’s automation delivers documentation needs with accuracy.

Pre-Visit Intake and Triage

The intake process is a paper-heavy part of care which healthcare facilities often struggle with. Today, patients don’t fill out lengthy forms requiring them to recall their history and other details that might stress them further. Heidi can automatically carry this out, precisely by pre-charting and mapping them into structured templates that only require the physician’s expertise and oversight.

Heidi extracts data from the generated documentation note so it can automatically fill out forms no matter how comprehensive it is. In Heidi’s workspace, clinicians can review notes and forms at the same time so they can help the patient focus on getting better. On a broader view, patients feel empathy and genuine concern during visits, which also improves connection with the health system between visits.

Adaptive Documentation

Automation systems use adaptive learning, where care systems can refine outputs by observing how clinicians edit or validate medical codes suggested by AI. Heidi’s personalization feature, for instance, improves accuracy this way. With the personalization button activated, clinicians can produce personalized notes and letters within the same workspace, and they can rely on Heidi to improve over time.

Appointment Scheduling

Scheduling appointments often results in lengthy wait times and unsuccessful attempts, which can frustrate patients seeking care. Moreover, conventional methods like manual logbooks for booking appointments are susceptible to errors. Online systems built for scheduling are now efficiently reducing the pressure on clinicians to receive and accommodate phone calls.

Heidi’s AI receptionist triages appointment urgency based on information from intake forms, so it can direct cases of higher acuity to earlier slots. No-shows can be reduced as well thanks to the convenience and real-time messaging reminders automated by the system. In the long run, clinic resources are optimized and clinicians save admin hours.

Compliance with Privacy Regulations

Healthcare automation platforms embed audit trails and encryption policies to comply with APPs, GDPR, and HIPAA standards, to name a few. These global privacy regulations and other national equivalents govern devices used to extract patient info in clinics and hospitals. Fortunately, the use of AI tools limits data exposure by anonymizing PHI.

For instance, Heidi’s automation capabilities ensure alignment with compliance standards in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and more. It is built to be compliant with updated regulations from relevant sources. This is essential not only for audits and payer disputes but also for reassuring patients that their health information is securely handled when AI is used for intake.

The impact of Heidi’s automation reflected a transformative effect on care organizations. In the KLAS study, 100% of Heidi Health users in the study reported immediate positive outcomes, including reduced documentation time, improved note accuracy, and better clinician focus on patient care. Most clinicians reported a “dramatic reduction” in after-hours documentation, with one director noting that doctors began finishing on time within the first week of using Heidi.

Current trends in automation only reveal the expanded possibilities of AI capabilities and solutions in healthcare. With Heidi integrated into clinical workflows, what was once a vision is now a reality in clinicians’ daily practice.

Automation alone is not enough. Clinicians like you hold the key to ensuring care that is more humane and safe.

Try Heidi: Your AI Care Partner to Keep Healthcare Human

That’s what Heidi is here for: an AI care partner to help you across the patient journey. Heidi can do more than medical scribing capabilities; it is the leading AI solution in healthcare that can take your care capacity to new heights.

Heidi is powerful and when used to automate administrative workflows, you are guaranteed to deliver sustainable quality in care. Here’s how Heidi empowers you in practice:

Enhanced Accuracy: Leveraging the power of LLMs, Heidi can understand nuanced medical dialogue, ensuring that the transcribed notes are accurate and reflective of the patient-clinician interaction. This reduces the likelihood of errors that can occur with manual note-taking.
Improved Data Utilization: Heidi structures data in a standardized format, making it easier to analyze and retrieve information. This can enhance the quality of patient care and provide valuable data for medical research and analysis.
Cost-Effectiveness: Although there's an upfront investment in AI scribe technology, the long-term cost savings are significant. By reducing the time clinicians spend on documentation, healthcare facilities can optimize their operations and minimize the need for additional staffing for note-taking purposes.

At Heidi, we're not just building tools; we're shaping the future of AI in healthcare, one consult at a time. All the while, Heidi’s AI scribe has been built with security and compliance at the forefront. Our adherence to standards like ISO 27K certification and HIPAA is not just about meeting regulatory requirements; it's about earning the trust of clinicians and patients alike. Dive into our trust center, and you'll find a transparent display of our commitment to patient privacy and data integrity.

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Frequently Asked Questions about Healthcare Automation

What is the future of automation in healthcare?

The vision of a future ubiquitously augmented by AI automation in healthcare is swiftly approaching reality. Heidi heralds a future where automation enhances the human elements of medicine. It promises a return to the core of medical practice, where clinicians can concentrate fully on patient care, supported by AI that manages the rigorous demands of documentation with unmatched precision and intelligence.

What are the 4 types of healthcare automation systems?

The 4 types of automation systems widely used in healthcare improve administrative, clinical, patient engagement, and revenue cycle systems. Robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) are the backbone of admin and clinical automation. On the other hand, business process management (BPM) tools and data management systems power and orchestrate patient and revenue cycles.

While these systems provide distinct functions, all improve care outcomes, such as accuracy in charting, faster care support, consistent communication loops, and reduced claim denials.

What is the most widely used healthcare automation tool?

Heidi employs high-level automation capabilities to empower clinicians to spend more time on higher-value work. Features such as Ask Heidi, coding, and enhanced memory are prime examples that show how Heidi adapts to clinicians’ personal preferences and way of working. Heidi’s utility and impact on clinicians make it an indispensable AI care partner that they can rely on, even as care flows evolve.

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