Healthcare data is set to soar, with projections showing that it will grow from 2,300 exabytes in 2020 to an impressive 10,800 exabytes by 2025. To put that in perspective, that’s like having enough data to fill over 2.5 billion DVDs!

What’s more is that a large portion of this data is unstructured—scanned documents, handwritten notes, and PDFs that don’t easily integrate into traditional systems. This is where Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) comes in. IDP acts as a lifeline for healthcare organizations, helping them quickly sift through unstructured data so providers can retrieve vital information exactly when needed.

Key Documents in Healthcare and Why IDP is Essential

Every interaction, diagnosis, or treatment leaves a paper trail or a digital file; these documents form the backbone of every hospital or clinic. Healthcare professionals rely on various key documents to provide quality care, including:

• Patient Records
• Insurance Claims
• Lab Results
• Medical Prescriptions
• Consent Forms
• Discharge Summaries
• Doctors’ Notes

These documents come in various formats, including electronic health records (EHRs), scanned papers, handwritten notes, PDFs, and images from X-rays or MRIs. With hundreds or even thousands of documents to process, how can teams stay organized and ensure quick access to the correct information?

IDP simplifies this process by leveraging AI to capture and process information from these unstructured documents automatically.  What typically takes hours can now be completed in just seconds. This means healthcare teams can quickly extract vital information, allowing doctors and staff to dedicate more time to patient care rather than paperwork.

Key Benefits of IDP in Healthcare

IDP offers numerous benefits that enhance efficiency, accuracy, and patient care. Here’s a closer look at some of the key advantages of implementing IDP in healthcare organizations:

• Faster Data Processing: IDP drastically reduces the time needed to process documents. Tasks that consume hours—like data entry and document sorting—can be completed in seconds. This speed enables healthcare professionals to access critical information quickly, ensuring timely patient care and faster decision-making.
• Improved Accuracy: Human error is an inherent risk in manual data entry. IDP minimizes this risk by automating the extraction and processing of data from documents. With advanced AI algorithms, IDP can accurately capture information from various document types, ensuring that healthcare providers have reliable data for patient care and billing.
• Enhanced Patient Care: With IDP streamlining document management, healthcare providers can focus more on patient interactions rather than administrative tasks. Immediate access to patient records, lab results, and other vital documents empowers doctors and nurses to make informed decisions quickly, improving the overall patient experience.
• Cost Savings: IDP automates the repetitive task of processing medical documents, reducing the burden of manual work. This automation leads to lower operational expenses, allowing resources to be allocated more effectively while ensuring that patient care remains the top priority.

Use Cases of IDP in Healthcare

IDP is reshaping how healthcare organizations manage and process the vast volume of unstructured data. Automating tasks that used to take hours empowers healthcare teams to deliver faster, more efficient care. Here are some key use cases where IDP is making a significant impact:

1. Claims Processing
   Insurance claims are a crucial part of the healthcare ecosystem but often involve much paperwork. IDP simplifies this process by swiftly extracting important information from claim forms—whether they’re filled out digitally or on paper. With IDP, claims can be processed in seconds, leading to quicker approvals and payments. This means less time spent on paperwork and more time for healthcare providers to focus on their patients.
2. Patient Onboarding
   When a new patient is admitted, there are multiple documents involved—intake forms, medical history, consent forms, and more. Traditionally, these documents are scanned or manually filled out, requiring considerable time to process and file. IDP eliminates the manual effort by capturing the information from various formats, be it handwritten forms, PDFs, or scanned documents. It then integrates the data into the EHR system, ensuring seamless, accurate patient onboarding and easily accessible records.
3. Medical Billing
   Healthcare providers rely heavily on accurate medical billing to get paid for their services. IDP simplifies this by automatically extracting billing information from treatment records, invoices, and insurance claims. IDP swiftly captures vital data, such as patient demographics and procedure codes, regardless of the document format. This automation accelerates the billing cycle, minimizes errors, and ensures that providers receive their payments on time.

How IDP is Shaping Healthcare’s Future

The future of IDP in healthcare looks bright. With the growing popularity of telehealth, wearable devices, and remote patient monitoring, the amount of unstructured data from various sources, like video consultations, wearable devices, and patient feedback, will only increase in the coming years. This surge in data presents a unique opportunity for IDP to streamline processes. With AI and machine learning, healthcare organizations can quickly extract insights from diverse formats to enable faster reporting and analytics.

Streamlining Healthcare Workflows with Astera

Time and accuracy are essential for providing quality care, which is why choosing the right IDP solution is so important. Astera is the perfect fit for healthcare organizations looking to improve their data management. Astera’s AI document processing automates the extraction and handling of vital documents, allowing healthcare teams to focus on delivering exceptional patient care rather than getting bogged down by administrative tasks.

Astera effectively extracts vital key-value pairs from various healthcare documents. For example, users can pull details like Insurance Provider and Policy Number from claims to quickly verify patient coverage and speed up the billing process.

With Astera, providers can streamline patient onboarding, speed up claims processing, and improve billing accuracy while focusing on delivering top-notch care.

For more information on how Astera can transform your healthcare operations, contact us today!