For most organisations reducing costs mean less people and very often training is an early casualty; the people who are left are expected to do more with fewer resources - and with less training. This can seriously impact the business particularly when interactions with customers depend on specialist knowledge and processes. Even today the systems in use at so many organizations require a high level of specialist knowledge - which means the users need training before they are really effective. To overcome this problem requires creative thinking. One solution is to develop decision support tools which sit alongside the application and guide the users through the use of the system. For example the processes necessary to effectively register patients at U.S. hospitals require a high level of specialist knowledge and skill in using the hospital information system patient access screens. It is often said that it takes three years to train a patient registrar and yet the average time in the job is only two years! Even experienced registrars have a challenge in keeping up with changing requirements and new processes - such as estimating the cost and then how to ask the patient to make a payment for the treatment they are to receive. One of the newest customers of our Automated Intelligent Guided Registration solution has built over 70 guides, alerts, prompts and question sets in their patient registration system. This means that as the registrar is going through the process of registering a patient they have a Virtual Expert sitting at their shoulder. This makes their job easier and for the hospital ensures that patient data is accurately collected and the interaction with the patient meets their compliance standards. This is only one example of many systems which can be improved by using a virtual expert. Any system which relies upon the user to input free form data where previously training has been necessary can be supplemented by the use of automated intelligent guidance.
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