Orbita transforms nurse and patient hospital experiences with ServiceNow

OrbitaASSIST and ServiceNow mobile app improves nurses’ workplace experiences and enables them to respond faster to patient requests
Time is of the essence in healthcare. Prompt, decisive interventions can improve treatment outcomes and save lives. However, hospitals are under increasing pressure to reduce costs while maintaining the quality of care and the patient experience.

Fortunately, new technologies, including mobile and voice apps, are enabling hospitals—and the broader healthcare system—to meet this challenge.

A team in Sydney, Australia recently identified an opportunity to use AI, automation and mobility to enable nurses to respond to, prioritise, and escalate patient requests faster—providing a higher quality experience for patients, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.

“We initially met with an Australian hospital chief executive with whom we had a good relationship to see if there was a problem that needed to be solved,” says Nick White, Principal and Co-Creator, OrbitaASSIST and Executive Vice President, Patient Care Solutions at Orbita. “The chief executive brought 20 nurses in and we workshopped and matured the idea.”

A smart solution
Based on input and the expertise of the team came OrbitaASSIST—a solution that combined smart speakers, such as Amazon Echo, to enable patients to state requests verbally rather than press call buttons; task creation and automation through ServiceNow; and workflow automation through mobile updates delivered to shared smartphones used by nurses in hospitals. The app is custom-built on ServiceNow, with custom tables, logic, and workflow all created on the Now Platform.

The team dedicated one lead mobile developer to the solution and partnered with the ServiceNow mobile product management team to undertake builds and add new features. The organisation then completed extensive internal testing.

“The solution enables nurses to acknowledge to patients they have heard their requests and are on the way to help,” says Nick. “Nurses also know exactly what a patient is asking for and can respond appropriately.”

OrbitaASSIST, built on ServiceNow, also gave nurses and shift supervisors the ability to route or escalate tasks to more appropriate hospital professionals—a key benefit for nurses operating at the highest levels of training and qualification, known as ‘top of license’.

100% acceptance
Feedback from patients and nurses in hospitals that piloted OrbitaASSIST was overwhelmingly positive, with every surveyed patient saying if they returned to the hospital, they would love to have the solution in their room.

Furthermore, because nurses arrive at hospital bedsides with full knowledge of patient requests, they have the right equipment and knowledge to address the issue. In fact, 87% of nurses felt more confident in their ability to appropriately respond to patient requests.

The ServiceNow-powered mobility component of the solution has helped reduce nurses’ average time to respond to patient requests from 11 minutes to three minutes—with far-reaching positive implications for both.

An upgraded mobile experience
ServiceNow had upgraded its mobile capabilities in the new release of the Now Platform. The ServiceNow product team met with the Orbita team to understand the mobility challenges and requirements OrbitaASSIST was experiencing.

Building and deploying a mobile app is usually a big project that requires considerable effort. Developers typically have to write code for multiple operating systems, including iOS and Android, undertake testing, complete maintenance activities for operating system upgrades, and deploy to app stores. However, the parties elected to use ServiceNow® Mobile Studio—an interface that allows developers to work on custom apps in a centralised location—to build flows and iterate after field testing and obtaining feedback. All the developers needed to do was configure screens with data in the ServiceNow mobile platform to deploy a beautiful, native experience. In just six weeks, the team and ServiceNow worked through the list of needs and built a custom, fully native mobile app.

Key benefits of the app for nurses include functionality that enables them to check in and out of shifts and view and respond to requests in an intuitive way. “With the new app, nurses can view the requests they need to respond to without scrolling or searching, and the location of the patient that made the request,” explains Nick. “They can also receive prioritised push notifications that allow nurses to respond to requests in real time, based on the priority and urgency of each request, as well as seamlessly adding and closing tasks.”

Faster and optimised
“The key difference is the performance and experience of the nurses using a native mobile app from ServiceNow,” adds Nick. “The app is faster and optimised for the form factor of the devices they are using—it is simple and specific to the functions nurses need.”

New opportunities for ASSIST with Orbita
According to Nick, Orbita has identified a range of opportunities to improve the functionality of the product. “The Orbita platform is focused on low-code/no-code conversational design and management—and serving that content up to any natural language interface,” he says. “This includes smart speakers, chatbots, web chat, and even analogue phones.”

Nick continues, “OrbitaASSIST operates on the Orbita platform and the Now Platform, and while the incubation stage had cracked the opportunity for nurse calls facilitated by voice, Orbita’s multimodal nature and evolving technology in natural language processing and conversational AI presented new opportunities.”

ServiceNow to remain core
ServiceNow is expected to remain core to the digital workflows triggered by voice interactions in OrbitaASSIST. Orbita is looking to expand the role of ServiceNow as a central information system for workflow and activities, including whether data feeds from other devices can be added and whether analytics can be used to facilitate predictive care.

The organisation is also looking to use the latest ServiceNow mobile products to enhance the user interface and user experience of its app, as well as broaden its application to provide a unified view of nurses’ duties and responsibilities. Under the team at Orbita, OrbitaASSIST is helping extend ServiceNow into the front line of healthcare businesses. “Together, Orbita and ServiceNow will work to extend the use cases applicable for care workers, creating the future of work for these roles,” Nick says.

“Overall, OrbitaASSIST—powered by ServiceNow—packages our intellectual property and allows our client base to use the lessons we have learned from hospitals and healthcare systems around the world to deploy a solution that transforms care for patients and the experience for nurses,” concludes Nick.

Download PDF