Alberta Health Services automates healthcare operations at scale
Alberta Health Services (AHS), Canada's largest healthcare provider, manages 100 hospitals and extensive facilities. To improve efficiency and free its healthcare staff for higher-value care, AHS implemented a large-scale Intelligent Automation program leveraging Microsoft Azure AI technologies. Using robotic process automation (RPA), chatbots, task mining, and computer vision, AHS automated 47 business processes across HR and IT—including employee onboarding and service desk requests. Their structured approach included project scoring, multi-layered governance, and staff engagement. This transformation delivered dramatic savings, cutting 200 work years and $1.3 million in costs, accelerating staff onboarding, supporting 17,000 new hires and 47,000 staff transfers per year, and earning multiple industry awards. The program’s continuous improvement structure and focus on compliance ensure business alignment and regulatory adherence. Building on these results, AHS plans further chatbot expansion, AI-driven workflow optimization, and greater cloud adoption with Microsoft Azure. The automation toolkit combined process mining, RPA, chatbots, and embedded AI models for administration and clinical operations. Strong governance and financial prioritization drove outcomes while ensuring compliance.
- Organization
- Alberta Health Services
- Industry
- Healthcare
- Location
- Canada
- Published
- March 2025
Reported outcomes
Strategic outcomes
Primary read
Use case focus
Showing 3 of 5
- 1Automated employee onboarding and staff transfer management
- 2Automated IT service desk workflow and requests handling
- 3Automated document generation and data-driven administration
- Massive volume of time-consuming, repetitive administrative and IT tasks across 100 hospitals and 700 buildings.
- Healthcare staff spent excessive time on non-patient-facing work.
- Manual processes delayed onboarding 17,000+ new hires and 47,000 staff transfers annually.
- Operational inefficiencies increased costs and affected quality of care.
- Need for regulatory and audit compliance while automating processes.
- Implemented Intelligent Automation program with structured project intake and governance.
- Deployed Microsoft Azure AI, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), chatbots, process/task mining, and computer vision for workflow automation.
- Automated 47 key business processes, including HR onboarding and IT desk service requests.
- Integrated analytics and document intelligence for automation opportunities.
- Established multi-layered oversight including executive sponsorship, governance committee, and departmental champions.
- Saved 200 work years through automation.
- Reduced costs by $1.3 million via automated PDF generation and efficiency improvements.
- Accelerated onboarding for 17,000+ new hires and 47,000 staff transfers annually.
- Enabled 24/7 chatbot support and faster response times for IT and HR requests.
- Recognized with major industry awards for transformation excellence.
Architecture
The automation program used Microsoft Azure AI APIs, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), chatbots, and computer vision integrated with existing clinical and administrative systems. Processes were identified and scored for automation, then prioritized and developed by an Intelligent Automation Team. Multi-layered governance included executives, department heads, and cross-functional teams to align tech with compliance and operational goals. Automated workflows, such as onboarding and IT service desk requests, involved automated extraction, document processing through Azure AI, and task execution by RPA bots, all managed and monitored in the cloud.
Sources & evidence1
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