NHS launches first marketplace for automations

Public healthcare organisations across the UK have teamed up with the vendor Thoughtonomy to launch the first National Health Service (NHS) marketplace for robotic process automations (RPAs). The project is the brainchild of Darren Atkins, CTO at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT). Atkins spent 18 months working with Thoughtonomy to develop a cloud-based platform that any NHS trust can use to share their existing bots and collaborate on new ones, automating tasks from GP referrals to patient appointment reminders. Read next: How an NHS Trust adopted'virtual workers' to process GP referrals Atkins says this approach allows automated processes to be quickly deployed and will cut costly consultancy companies and other third parties out of the implementation process. All the content on the marketplace is owned by the NHS and can only be used by healthcare organisations for no commercial gain.