With over 30 years’ experience in software sales, why did you choose to narrow your focus to healthcare?

I think there’s immense value in specialisation, as it allows you to fully understand the challenges, workflows, demands, and priorities more in-depth, and tailor solutions to this more effectively. The National Health Service is very close to my heart and was a major factor in my decision to narrow my focus to healthcare. The healthcare sector in the UK is undergoing significant digital transformation, with technology being a key enabler to support this. Overall, it’s about leveraging my experience to make a meaningful impact in a specific domain, which I feel passionate about.

Having worked for SS&C Blue Prism for four years, what are the key responsibilities of your role?

My role at SS&C Blue Prism involves generating new business opportunities by identifying potential clients, understanding their challenges and priorities, and presenting Blue Prism’s intelligent automation (IA) solutions to address those needs and demands.

My key responsibilities include defining the value that will be returned from implementing automation, the return on investment, as well as working with the client to build a business case. Another key part of my job is building and maintaining strong relationships with clients, ensuring utilisation, and the development of an automation roadmap.
This involves regular communication and collaboration with regional NHS organisations, providing ongoing support and addressing any issues or concerns that may arise.

I work closely with internal teams such as customer success, solutions consulting, and marketing to ensure alignment on client needs and product offerings. This involves showcasing client stories and coordinating marketing campaigns, as well as developing and executing sales strategies to meet revenue targets and to continue to expand Blue Prism’s market presence as the leading intelligent automation provider across the NHS.

Another key part of my role involves tracking sales performance, pipeline metrics, and other key indicators to assess progress towards goals and identify areas for improvement.

What is SS&C Blue Prism’s role within the tech industry?

At SS&C Blue Prism we provide intelligent automation services and software solutions for the healthcare and financial services industries. By developing intelligent automation solutions, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, we help organisations improve productivity and efficiency with the aim to help deliver against their key strategic goals. For example, in the healthcare industry, automation can streamline time-consuming and costly tasks, assisting with managing elective care backlogs, accelerating diagnostics, and improving cancer pathways. Many organisations have found that administrative and operational tasks not only overwhelm the workforce but lead to excessive costs and are increasingly time-consuming. As a result, at SS&C Blue Prism, we believe strongly that a digital workforce is the way forward, deploying digital workers that will help assist the existing workforce and enable them to focus on more complex and rewarding tasks.

In the healthcare industry, automation can streamline time-consuming and costly tasks

What role do you predict AI will play in driving personalised healthcare plans in the future?

AI can transform the healthcare industry by enabling personalised medicine that caters to individual patient profiles, which is crucial for more precise and effective treatment strategies. By quickly and efficiently analysing, managing, and consolidating data and recorded encounters, AI could provide tailored solutions catered to the individual patient’s needs, enabling clinicians to give the best possible care and treatments, rapidly and effectively.

By enhancing operational efficiency in diagnostics and drug discovery, AI can be used to address challenges related to disease prevention with its predictive analytics capabilities. Moreover, AI-generated medical literature is easily accessible to healthcare providers and frontline staff, offering swift access to in-depth reviews, meta-analysis, visualisations, and more. Organisations facing talent shortages are quickly turning to skill-agnostic hiring platforms that use AI to match prospective employees’ soft and hard skills with job profiles.

What is SS&C Blue Prism Cloud RPA and how does it benefit companies?

SS&C Blue Prism offers a cloud-based intelligent automation solution that combines robotic process automation (RPA) technology and digital workers with built-in artificial intelligence, and seamless integration capabilities. This fully hosted and managed platform enables healthcare leaders to speed up their processes and allows staff to focus on the most important and valuable work: patient care.

Organisations can also choose to deploy a hybrid model, which allows them to roll out IA flexibly in the way that suits their organisation best. The platform simplifies operational activities and eliminates delays and the need for specialist skills while ensuring the highest level of security and governance. It is highly flexible and can be customised to meet business needs and specific requirements, ultimately reducing cost and effort. This solution is available and accessible at any time, scalable to meet business demands, and designed to streamline and optimise business operations.

NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) recently signed a resale agreement with SS&C Blue Prism. Which areas of the NHS will this help to drive efficiencies in, and why?

The partner agreement between NHS SBS and SS&C Blue Prism holds the potential to significantly scale automations across NHS trusts, integrated care systems and regions, supported by NHS SBS, the only full-service provider of corporate services to the NHS.

From optimising finance and accounting, automation can reduce errors, improve accuracy, accelerate financial close processes, enabling trusts to manage their finances more effectively and make data-driven decisions. Procurement and supply chain automations enable cost reductions, improve supplier relationships, and ensure timely delivery of goods and services, enhancing operational efficiency. We will
also look to drive efficiencies across HR and payroll, streamlining administrative processes to accelerate the time to hire, minimising errors, and improving candidate and employee experience.

How can telemedicine help bridge the health equality gap?

In the future, healthcare providers may use innovations such as AI-powered mobile clinics

Telemedicine can bridge the health equality gap within the NHS by improving access to healthcare services, eliminating geographical barriers, and enabling patients to access services remotely, particularly for underserved populations. Telemedicine empowers patients to actively participate in their own health management. By providing virtual consultations and remote monitoring, telemedicine ensures that patients can receive timely medical advice and treatment without the need for travel, which also assists with reducing waiting times. 

Telemedicine can also enable seamless communication and collaboration between healthcare providers, facilitating the sharing of patient information, treatment plans, and follow-up care. This promotes continuity of care, particularly for patients with chronic conditions or complex medical needs, who may require ongoing monitoring and management.

Telemedicine and telehealth are evolving into ‘omnimedicine’ in many parts of the world, which is a combination of in-person, virtual, and augmented reality consultations customised to meet the needs of patients. In the future, healthcare providers may use innovations such as AI-powered mobile clinics to bridge the healthcare gap by providing diagnostic and basic treatment options to underserved or remote populations, thus making quality healthcare more accessible.

What’s next for Blue Prism?

As the market leader for intelligent automation across the NHS, with over 90 NHS customers, Blue Prism will continue to support our customers to extend their automation roadmaps across cancer services, outpatients, diagnostics, maternity, and pharmacy, enabling improved patient care and the delivery of cost improvements across directorates.

Working with the integrated care systems (ICSs), we can see the centralisation of automation services across acute collaborative systems as a key enabler to improving patient outcomes, collaboration, and optimising resource utilisation.

By focusing on innovation, collaboration and alignment with NHS priorities, Blue Prism will continue to play a significant role in shaping the future of healthcare delivery in the UK.