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Explore Intelligent Document Automation

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Identify the different documents in healthcare and life sciences.
  • Explain the features of Intelligent Document Automation.
  • Sign up for a special Developer Edition org.

Before You Start

Before you start this module, consider completing the following recommended content.

Why Automate Documentation?

Automation brings order to your documentation. The healthcare system deals with many kinds of documents, which can overwhelm doctors and care providers. Studies reveal that care providers spend over 70% of their time on repetitive tasks like data entry. There’s greater room for error in such repetitive tasks, which often leads to delays and lack of proper care to patients.

A machine receiving different documents and creating an organized one.

Legacy systems such as mail, faxes, and paper documents bring several operational challenges. Receiving documents, entering the information manually, and taking text out of PDF editors are time-consuming tasks that hinder the delivery of effective patient care.

Automation reduces this burden significantly and saves time and effort for care providers and healthcare personnel.

Common Documents in Healthcare

Healthcare documents extend beyond X-rays and scanning results. Every piece of record created in a patient’s journey is part of healthcare documentation. Bills, application forms, hospitalization records, medicine prescriptions, patient referrals, authorizations, and lab test results are among the many documents that are part of the healthcare environment.

And newer documents are created every single day. Organizing these documents requires significant time and effort. This is where Intelligent Document Automation (IDA) comes to the rescue.

What Is Intelligent Document Automation?

Intelligent Document Automation is the Salesforce solution to automating healthcare documentation. IDA helps healthcare and life sciences companies digitize their document management processes, reduce administrative burdens, reduce clerical errors, and improve the patient experience.

IDA also includes the Intelligent Form Reader powered by Amazon Textract, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) capability, which can extract printed text and handwriting data from documents using machine learning. IDA helps increase the efficiency and accuracy of health document workflows, from processing patient referrals to enrolling patients into programs.

What Does Intelligent Document Automation Do?

Let’s find out more about what IDA can do. IDA can be used to:

Unify the end-to-end document lifecycle on a single platform: Healthcare personnel can receive, process, and track all the documents of a patient in a single HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)-compliant workspace. They can add, edit, and extract data from documents on the same screen. This eliminates the endless toggle between multiple screens. The data can be attached to the right patient records and populated to the appropriate fields. 

Streamline document intake: IDA uses the groundbreaking Intelligent Form Reader with Amazon Textract. Using machine learning, the Intelligent Form Reader reads documents, helps extract data, and automates data entry.

Create standardized checklists to improve accuracy and efficiency: Healthcare personnel can use a preconfigured checklist of items. This checklist can be used to process all received documents, such as patient referrals, preauthorization forms, prescriptions, and so on. For instance, a pharmaceutical company can have a checklist that includes a patient’s identity and consent, before enrolling the patient into a drug trial.

Perform document mapping: Documents are not limited to the usual referral forms, discharge summaries, and prescriptions. New documents are created every day and can stack up quickly. Intelligent Document Automation allows you to create new mappings to accommodate newer documents that have previously not been part of standard fields. You can upload and classify up to eight new document types in a single workflow, including support for photo identification.

With Intelligent Document Automation, healthcare providers and life sciences organizations can simplify patient care and engagement, work together more efficiently, and be more productive.

Sign Up for a Developer Edition Org with Intelligent Document Automation

To complete this module, you need a special Developer Edition org that contains Intelligent Document Automation and our sample data. Get the free Developer Edition and connect it to Trailhead now so you can complete the challenges in this module.

Even if you’ve recently signed up for a Developer Edition org, sign up for a new one now. We’re always adding new data. Note that this Developer Edition is designed to work with the challenges in this module, and may not work for other modules. Always check that you’re using the Trailhead Playground or special Developer Edition org that we recommend.

  1. Sign up for a free Developer Edition org with Intelligent Document Automation.
  2. Fill out the form. For Email, enter an active email address. For Username, enter a username that looks like an email address and is unique. It doesn’t need to be a valid email account (for example, yourname@hc4evah.com is fine).
  3. Click Sign me up. A confirmation message appears.
  4. When you receive the activation email (this might take a few minutes), open it and click Verify Account.
  5. Complete your registration by setting your password and challenge question.

Tip: Write down your username, password, and login URL for easy access later.

You are logged in to your Developer Edition. Now connect your new Developer Edition org to Trailhead.

  1. Make sure you’re logged in to your Trailhead account.
  2. In the Challenge section at the bottom of this page, select Connect Org from the picklist.
  3. On the Login screen, enter the username and password for the Developer Edition org you just set up.
  4. On the Allow Access screen, click Allow.
  5. On the Want to connect this org for hands-on challenges? screen, click Yes! Save it.
    You are redirected back to the challenge page and ready to use your new Developer Edition org to earn this badge.

You’ll land on the Setup page when you launch the org. Next, click App Launcher, then search for and select Health Cloud - Lightning Console.

Now that you have an org equipped with Intelligent Document Automation, you’re ready to try the steps in this module and get hands-on.

Resources

Salesforce Help: Intelligent Document Automation

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