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tatiana_kojar
Explorer

Introduction


At Skybuffer, we cannot stand idly by when global community is close to being paralyzed by COVID-19 and its consequences. Preparing our submission for Innovation for Italy with Telemedicine Solution for Remote Advice and Check-ups, we have re-shaped our SAP ERP cognitive automation content and have built an end-to-end intelligent landscape providing medical assistance, distant consultation and remote check-ups for home patients, both for pathologies linked to COVID-19 and other diseases including those of chronic nature.

Here is our offer of how SAP Conversational AI, SAP ERP On Premise and SAP Solution Manager can be quickly organized into the tele-assistance IT solution for the current pandemic times with re-usability in the future.

Challenge 


Skybuffer’s general long-lasting priority for product development has been cognitive automation of corporate IT landscapes chosen round 2 years ago in order to humanize, extend and facilitate IT landscape accessibility for customers, partners and employees from any edge, in any language, via text and voice-enabled communication channels allowing seamless on-demand targeted human guidance step in and out of the conversation flow when found appropriate.

In recent COVID-19 pandemic times, when lots of countries face or are about to face massive problems with hospitalizing all affected patients, when governments have to call for home quarantine and self-isolation, it is vitally important to monitor and track health conditions of those patients who have to stay at home so that nearly every citizen of every state could be under constant medical control and subject to emergency rescue measures if detected to be in critical conditions.

Solution 


At Skybuffer, we invented unique algorithms and methodology to develop conversational skills of any level of complexity and merge them into the solid cognitive experience in any language, integrated into any number of IT systems, patched into any communication channel, voice-enabled, working both autonomously and seamlessly engaging human expertise for targeted monitoring of processes and scenarios in hybrid communication mode, where a human expert is enabled to communicate to both users and cognitive automation interfaces routing them to a particular business scenario execution. Applying this methodology and algorithms, we developed 400+ conversational AI business scenarios for SAP digital core systems, 50+ Banking industry specific scenarios and 40+ Passenger Transportation industry specific scenarios to orchestrate and transform the way people work.  Involving customers’ expertise teams to collaborate with us and adjust the solution for the industry challenges, we keep perfecting the cognitive automation content thanks to the high-quality advisory level of appropriate specialists.

Recently, we have re-imagined our cognitive automation solution to be used for telemedicine assistance for home patients, both for pathologies linked to COVID-19 and other types of diseases including those of chronic nature. It took us less than 24 hours to re-shape SAP ERP skills and build a landscape for distant consultation, remote check-ups and assistance provided by medical experts at any convenient time.

With this solution, regular monitoring of patient’s health conditions becomes very easy through chat-based or voice-based AI assistant via Telegram, WhatsApp or webchat.

Doctors are effectively assisted and their overload in patients’ guidance is greatly facilitated as patients’ symptoms are being regularly taken by cognitive automation into the system for further tracking, medical analysis and treatment recommendation. Doctors’ access to the stored data can be shared, too. Moreover, medical experts can join any dialogue with any patient any time if any critical condition is detected and emergency measures are required.

Here is the video illustrating the case

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox5ugwIY53g&feature=youtu.be

And now let us check step-by-step the way the solution is used in different channels, the reported information is saved in the backend, tracked and accessed by doctors.

IMPORTANT NOTE: All pieces of sample personal information shown (names, telephone numbers, email and postal addresses, personnel numbers in SAP, etc) are dummy data and do not reveal any personal data of existing people, all possible similarities and matches are 100% coincidental.


Step 1. Patient Registration in the System


Patient master record can be created automatically during authentication process


Patient uses webchat:






Fig.1 Patient registration conversation





Fig.2 Patient data in SAP back-end system

 

Patient uses WhatsApp:






Fig. 3 Patient registration via WhatsApp channel

 

Step 2. Patient Remote Check-Up.


Patient’s symptoms are captured by chatbot.



Peculiarities:


Check-up data is saved to SAP ERP backend system immediately.

Doctor can assess data in SAP any time using either desktop, mobile client or via cognitive interface.

Considering the data in SAP system, a background periodical job can send PUSH notifications to patients in order to record their next check-up data.

Alerts based on the check-ups data can be sent to healthcare experts in order to provide attention to patients in critical conditions.

Patient uses webchat to send check-up data to healthcare center. SAP transactional record is created automatically via cognitive interface:










Fig.4 Patient self-service check-up initiated by the patient

 



Fig.5 Patient’s check-up data is stored in SAP digital core


Patient uses WhatsApp to send check-up data to the healthcare center.


Self-service check-up:




Fig.6 Patient self-service check-up initiated by patient in WhatsApp channel

 

Push notifications:


Fig.7 Push notifications to initiate remote check-up

 

Fig.8 SAP transactional record is created automatically via cognitive interface


Step 3.  Remote Human Expertise Involvement.


Healthcare consultants can see all chats and join any time.


Dialogues can be automatically filtered by region and other parameters.


Fig.9 Healthcare Expert's Interactive Workplace Conversational Dashboard

 

Major values of the intelligent Hybrid Chats solution developed by Skybuffer:



  • Omnichannel access

  • Hybrid chats (AI-operator-AI), reducing operator’s involvement (dialogue spying and steering when necessary)

  • Regular logging of chats in SAP Solution Manager in the selected language (possibility of further data analysis in SAP Qualtrics)

  • Information gathering for additional training of NLP model


Fig.10 Patient’s utterance has not triggered SAP CAI skill. Healthcare expert is notified in Skybuffer Hybrid Chats

 

Fig.11 Healthcare expert activates cognitive automation scenario

 

Fig.12 Patient’s utterance has not triggered SAP CAI skill (WhatsApp channel). Healthcare expert is notified in Skybuffer Hybrid Chats.

 

Fig.13 Healthcare expert activates cognitive automation scenario

Fig.14 Conversation is categorized automatically

All the patients’ messages get automatically categorized (except general skills, such as "greetings", etc.) Categorization is a standard SAP functionality and, accordingly, the categories reporting is available out-of-the-box with an ability to build customized reports and dashboards. Additionally, categorization can be used to control authorization and routing the patients’ messages to particular healthcare experts pool.

 

Step 4. Patients Data Management in SAP ERP.


Study patients’ records.


Adjust patients’ master data and health-related information.


Fig.15 Patient’s Personal Data in SAP back end

Fig.16 Patient’s Address Data (solution allows managing temporary addresses as well)

 

Fig.17 Patient’s Diseases Data

 

Fig.18 Each record is tracked cumulatively as a separate transaction message

 

Fig.19 Diseases Record Data Overview

 

Fig.20 Each check-up is tracked cumulatively as a separate transaction message

 

Step 5. Additional Features
SAP ERP, SAP BI and SAP Cloud Power of Data Management


 

SAP ERP

  • Full flexibility of patients’ data management with SAP ERP functionality

  • SAP Fiori, Mobile or Desktop access

  • Embedded cognitive automation interfaces to access data in text and voice channels, from any edge


SAP BI

  • Embedded into SAP ERP functionality business intelligence content

  • Standard SAP operational reporting

  • Customized dashboards and complex reporting solutions

  • Native integration with SAP Cloud Analytics


SAP Cloud Platform

  • SAP Conversational AI and Skybuffer AI delivers more than 400 cognitive scenarios that are ready to be used

  • Native integration with SAP ERP backend via SAP Connectivity

  • Omnichannel integration to help patients in any channel via web access or from mobile devices


Fig.21 Solution Diagram


Solution Functionalities in More Detail


The solution is based on SAP Cloud Platform, SAP S4HANA, SAP Solution Manager. Skybuffer has developed AI content and integration components for WhatsApp, SMS and other channels, as well as SAP Cloud Platform extensions and Google AutoML services. Technically, the back-end part of the solution is SAP software servers and Skybuffer integration dockers. Front-end is SAP Cloud Platform (SAP Conversational AI). Twilio cloud platform is used by the solution for WhatsApp and SMS.

The main functional blocks of the solution are the chatbot as the interface (multiple languages, omnichannel), the hybrid chats application as the operator's workplace (where the operator can any time text to the patient or the chatbot), SAP Solution Manager to automatically categorize and log each conversation, S4HANA system to collect the patient's data (address, age, family, diseases tracking data and 500+ standard types of patient data cards), SAP Data Warehouse for reporting.

The solution allows authenticating a patient or a doctor via SMS or Email session keys. The dialogue participant data can also be used to authenticate the patient in WhatsApp, SMS and other channels where it is made possible. The solution can be integrated into any local authentication mechanism (for example, Bank ID or another national authentication provider). In case SAP Fiori mobile client is in use on Android or iOS devices, basic (password-based) authentication can be applied as well.

SAP Data Warehouse is a part of the solution that makes it possible for the patients’ data to be collected, stored and used to develop customized reports or dashboards of any complexity level. There are a lot of standard SAP reports available out-of-the-box (e.g. statistics by nationality, gender, age, diseases, headcount reports, etc.). SAP reporting expertise is well available on the market and any SAP service provider can adjust reporting part of the solution as well as Skybuffer can do.

Being based on SAP standard on premise software, our solution can be integrated with any possible 3rd party or bespoke solutions using SAP standard data integration mechanisms (IDOCs, Web services, Process Orchestration, Data extraction and etc.) and also providing possibility for custom development of integration interfaces of any complexity that can be done by Skybuffer or other SAP service providers.

Our solution is using standard SAP software as its back-end part, in this case it can be easily reconfigured/extended for other usage purposes. SAP expertise is widely available in the market, so there will be no problem to reuse the system and cognitive interfaces that are embedded into it. The solution is designed to track any diseases/illnesses/diagnoses and allows adding a diagnosis via a customized sub-type that can consist of date, time, any number of other parameters.

The front-end part of the solution for patients is an omnichannel conversational interface (can work in text or even in voice mode). Additionally, SAP Fiori web/mobile client can be used to provide patients with access to personal data (optional). Doctors’ access is also through conversational interfaces (web chat, Teams, WhatsApp, etc.), SAP Fiori web/mobile client or even SAP GUI desktop client that can optionally be used at doctors’ workstations

SAP backend on premise systems can be installed with any infrastructure prepared for running SAP applications. It can be either cloud infrastructure provider (AWS, Google, Azure), or dedicated physical infrastructure (servers). SAP is well-reputed for its industry applications, so there should not be any specific requirements for this solution. Skybuffer connectors for SMS, WhatsApp, Voice calls and other communication channels can be deployed with any x86 hardware

The solution is deployed as an SAP Partner Managed Cloud, which means that Skybuffer will hold responsible for both SAP Cloud part of the solution activation and configuration and also SAP on premise backend part of the solution installation, including Skybuffer connectors for communication channels.

Skybuffer software is packed and delivered as an SAP Qualified Partner Packaged solution with the deployment time of 5-7 days, including systems setup and initial master data transferring, in case of any. Skybuffer undertakes to organize deployment activities round the clock implementing internal daily transitions of activities between our 5 offices from India through Belarus, Poland and Norway to the USA.

 

Outcome 


Skybuffer’s cognitive automation hybrid approach and ready-to-be-used sets of conversational AI business skills for corporate IT landscapes shift employees' focus to value-adding activities and allow supporting companies even in unfortunate times of having to keep necessary social distance.

The cognitive automation solution is based on SAP software family with over 400 ready-to-be-used conversational scenarios, among others covering personnel management cases that allow creating personnel number, getting address information, getting information about symptoms and measurements taken. The solution supports more than 100 languages in text channels and provides possibilities of push notifications. Human experts can monitor the solution performance and talk to patients any time together with conversational AI.

The designed healthcare scenarios can be extended according to any necessary logic.

Skybuffer solution is packed and delivered as an SAP Qualified Partner Packaged solution with the deployment time of 5-7 days, including systems setup and initial master data transferring, in case of any.
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