Israeli robotic tech on the front line against virus
What do health systems need in order to effectively continue their fight against coronavirus?
As medical staff members work tirelessly to tend those who are sick, much of the effort to tackle the outbreak relies on a vast amount of information being parsed and transmitted quickly to those who need it.
In order to help achieve this goal, Tel Aviv-based company Kryon Systems not only set up technology to transfer thousands of COVID-19 lab test results from the Health Ministry to Maccabi Health Services in record time, but is also offering to provide the same solution to any health system in the world free of charge.
A leading company in robotic process automation, or RPA, Kryon works to create, maintain and manage virtual machines that can function as virtual workers, the company’s CEO Harel Tayeb explained to The Jerusalem Post.
“RPA solutions allow computers to act like human beings and execute any logical process within an organization, even the most complicated. In addition, they are more efficient, faster, cheaper and work 24/7,” he said.
Among other activities, Kryon manages the entire sector of digital mortgages of one of Israel’s leading banks.
With 2.4 million members, nonprofit health maintenance organization Maccabi approached the company to find a solution that would allow it to integrate detailed Health Ministry files with confidential coronavirus test results into its system. The manual uploading of these files was creating weekslong backlogs and a mass of human errors. In light of the dramatic increase in the number of tests performed every day in the country, this was becoming less and less sustainable.
“I got a call at 11 a.m. on Friday morning by a representative of Maccabi who told me that they had a process that they thought we could help with,” Daniel Peled, Kryon VP Channel Sales, told the Post. “He asked me if we could have the automatized procedure up and running by Sunday morning. I explained that we would need someone available to describe to us the workflow as well as to receive remote access to their system. We found a developer, and within an hour he was in touch with the Maccabi business analyst. On Saturday night the system was ready, they did some testing, and it went live on Sunday.”
Ofir Kadosh, CIO of Maccabi, said in a statement: “These are unprecedented times for Maccabi Health Services and Israeli medicine. It is critical to leverage innovative technology to streamline intensive processes so we can focus on creating the best possible patient outcomes.”
“Within an hour after calling Kryon Friday morning, we amazingly had a signed agreement, and 48 hours later we had a fully automated integration with the Israeli Ministry of Health. Prior to the automation, this process would have taken one to two months of work by several employees. Now we can focus on the important work of testing and treating patients,” he added.